2022, the world seems to be a volatile, angry, aggressive, depressing place….. so my blog is here to tell you that it’s not! Just look out the window, look at whatever nature happens to be anywhere near you. It may seem as though nature is battling us all the way, that its struggling. And sometimes I do despair when I drive up our road to the village where we drive off the tar and see the remaining huge msasa trees tumbling down to be made into charcoal that probably ends up in China. But… the rainy season is approaching, and all around us nature is ramping up its defences and getting ready for the greatest show on earth, the Intertropical Convergence Zone is building up over the equator and starting its trek south towards us. Its 33 degrees celsius but there is promise in the dusty, hazy, smoky air. The grass is bone dry, and a spark from a poacher or a wayward fire from the herdsman can cause massive fires burning everything in its wake. Or is it? In Africa we are blessed with fire resistant trees. None of that exploding sap business like the pines of North America or the eucalyptus of Aussie. Here the sap protects the trees, and unless the tree is extremely dry from age or disease, the green sap in the tree trunks stops the tree from burning. The leaves may be singed and crumpled, but a few days later, the new growth is already coming through, bright and beautiful. That is something to be very grateful for. The fires are devastating for insects and small creatures, true. But the fires often clean up the undergrowth and when the rains come new seeds under the soil start to germinate. Nature is incredibly forgiving. Unlike the human race. Or is that also not true? We have been living in “interesting times” to quote one of my favourite authors, Terry Pratchett. The Queen of the United Kingdom has died, and the aftermath of mourning and outpouring of grief witnessed from all corners of the world was unbelievable and to me showed incredible empathy and emotion that I had thought was gone from our world. All ages, races and religions were brought together through one special little old lady dying. The Queen, I have come to realise, was a ardent supporter of nature, particularly trees! She started a campaign to reforest the Commonwealth, called The Queens Green Canopy, www.queensgreencanopy.org.

So in conclusion, the state of the world today depends on how we want to view it. We can focus on the mainstream news and feel dragged down by all the bad news being fed to us, or we can pick ourselves up, dust off our big girl pants and focus on the good. I discovered a page on facebook called the Good News Network. It’s a wonderful site, focusing on the good, positive and miraculous events happening worldwide, all day every day. From new inventions not using fossil fuels, to the discovery of a caterpillar that can eat plastic and turn it into organic waste. It makes you realise how the mainstream news pushes the negative agenda and we all get caught up in it.

So, here are some sketches from my journal, to get you on your happy plane, and help to get your soul to sing.