Field Notes Newsletter

I read a lot of books, but it’s the ones that stick with me that make it onto my list of favourites, that I’ll read over and over again as the years go on. These are the books that got under my skin, that I couldn’t stop thinking about, whose characters haunted my dreams. Manage subscription

Apologies this is late. I sat down to write this last Friday, but had one of those days where nothing goes right. I felt completely umotivated and lethargic and the whole day was a write-off. Subsequently, I’m now going to have to work Bank Holiday Monday to catch up on work. Freelance life is going well and I love that I can organise my own time but I’m not very good at giving myself time off.

Manage subscription I can’t really believe that it’s been five years since we (my boyfriend, dog and I) packed up our old house in the Manchester suburbs and relocated to the countryside. My life is now completely different, and I wouldn’t change it for anything. I’m a countryside convert, and can’t ever see myself living in a bigger town or a city again.

I mentioned this on my Instagram Stories yesterday and woke this morning thinking let’s go for it. I’ve always loved reading, ever since I used to check ten books out from the library every week as a child, and I really enjoy discussing the books that I’ve read with other people who love to read. I toyed with the idea of a book club on Instagram for a while, but Substack seems like such a better place to host it.

It’s that time of year. My window sill are full of pots and trays, and I’m looking forward to spending the entire weekend in my greenhouse, planting seeds and potting bulbs and tubers. I have visions of how my garden will look in just a few short months, and I can’t wait to grow more flowers and vegetables than ever before. I’ve probably got too much to grow for how much space I have, but I will find space somehow.

I’m definitely guilty of wishing the winter away. Unless I’m knee-deep in snow, winter is my least favourite season - a few months that I have to get through before the days lengthen and the sun becomes warmer. Now that spring is officially here, I can breath a sigh of relief that I made it through the time of year that I find the hardest, and look ahead to my favourite months. However, just because winter is my least favourite time of year doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy it.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel is another of my all-time favourite books, and I know many other people feel the same. Dystopian novels often feel too ‘Hollywood’ to me, making a bigger deal out of whatever apolcalyptic event has taken place than on the characters and how their lives are impacted on a smaller scale. Station Eleven does a wonderful job of focusing on those smaller moments, and also showing how life doesn’t have to end just because society has.

It’s just over a week until the Spring Equinox (Monday 20th March). I always see the Equinox as the turning point in the year, when my least favourite season draws to a close and we creep closer towards my favourite time of year. Equinox is when day and night are equal, and from 20th March onwards, our nights will shrink as the days grow longer and brigher.

Every year I get more into gardening, counting down the days until the new series of Gardeners World and spending far too much money on plants and seeds. The first year we lived in this house, we haphazordly grew vegetables in every available space, the next year we narrowed down and grew the things that worked well that first year. Then the pandemic hit and I got much more invested in sowing seeds and spending time in the garden that we were lucky to have.

This is a follow-up post from ‘How to Abandon Fast Fashion on a Budget’, so I’m not going to talk too much how to afford a sustainable and ethical wardrobe. A small disclosure, however: take the word ‘affordable’ with a pinch of salt. What is affordable for one person may not be for another.