Helen Baczkowska
helenb92.bsky.social
Helen Baczkowska
@helenb92.bsky.social
170 followers 58 following 120 posts
Writer and ecologist with a love of landscape history and Britain's common land, of wild places and the stories of dissent in our lands. Author of Twyford Rising, a story of land and resistance. For more check out http://helenbaczkowska.com
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
I am speaking to students in Wales this week. All bemoaning lack of id and fieldcraft teaching. I notice this interviewing people for jobs at NWT too. Need to make being a field naturalist cool & accessible.
Reposted by Helen Baczkowska
It’s our final round of Nature or No Nature!

Keir Starmer, you’re up again.

Nature in the UK will thrive or fail based on your government's decisions.

This huge responsibility lays with you and it cannot be ignored.

So, our final question to you:
Train journey opportunity to catch up on reading. Peter Marren's books always raise a smile for me...elegant mix of science and wit. An underrated nature writer imho.
Of everyone I know, you are one of only 2 with a gramophone! The other has Handel's Messiah, which takes a lot of record changes!
Finally picked up my Mum's old gramophone today. Still works! If we run out of electricity, the party is at mine, listening to Bing Crosby.
Reposted by Helen Baczkowska
Drying petals for rose petal tea. I stopped buying herb teas years ago as the price is so high, and most of the ingredients seem to grow in my garden. I will add lime flowers to these for a restful, soothing drink.
I buy up old enamel containers at car boots. Even those without lids, as plates work. Mouse proof, but my kitchen looks very 1940s! Hen and pony and sheep food in metal bins outside. If in sheds, mice come in sheds looking for it. It is an endless game of rodent dodging!
One of my all time favourite plants..one of those that make you think 'ooo, this place deserves a closer look'.
Love tribute to the wonderful Jamie, one of those warm people you felt was a friend as soon as you met him. He will be so missed.
She is an attentive one, looking at those ears! I miss seeing the world through the gap between the ginger ears of my driving pony, although right now I have these 2 in my care.
Amazing to be here at Mayflower Studios in Southampton for a book reading. After 30 years, Twyford Down still arouses strong emotions among many.

#defendnature
#twyforddown
Reposted by Helen Baczkowska
Hello—Is A River Alive? has been adapted as Radio 4’s Book of the Week next week.
Five episodes, read by me—& we’ve folded in field recordings & some beautiful Max Richter music.
First episode, Anima, broadcasts tomorrow at 11.45am.
You can listen here:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...
BBC Radio 4 - Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane, Episode 1: Anima
Robert Macfarlane explores an idea that changes the world – that a river is alive.
www.bbc.co.uk
Seems to get worse with age...
Reposted by Helen Baczkowska
Keir Starmer is about to find out who the real blockers are after disastrously failing to provide an alternative to the far right, and leading an attack on those protecting the environment from inside Government

archive.ph/2025.05.03-1...
I have an elderly cousin who, like horse chestnut, wins the 'most tasteless card' award every birthday and Christmas. I shall think of her when I see these flowers now! Mind you, passion flower very flamboyant too.
England still feels like an adopted country for me.

But then, there are blackcaps and blackbirds, song thrushes, and bulbous buttercups in the churchyard.

And I realise I love England's gentle wildness.

#churchyardsandwildlife
#wilderchurchyards
Thank you. He touched the hearts of all of us who knew him
Gypsy cob foal born on the common at 6am. Right outside my front door. I watched her wobbly first steps.

I am calling her Annie, after my mum who saved this bit of land from the plough & made it a common. Without her, me, baby Annie & her mum would not have such a great place to be.