Another season, another lockdown. With Covid-restrictions tightened again in London today, memories of those strange, otherworldly months in Spring come flooding back. I find myself thinking of the luminous painting that 82-year old artist David Hockney shared with the world in March, of sunshine-yellow daffodils holding up firmly against a background of bright green grass and a turquoise sky. “Do Remember They Can’t Cancel the Spring’, was its title, a message of light in dark times.

The daffodils have long gone; on my walks in Hampstead Heath I am threading conkers and acorns and damp Autumn leaves. But this is the thing with nature: it cannot be canceled. Humans may damage it, but nature has a way of persisting, growing, and reproducing. Plants and trees blossom and decay, only to re-appear with the precision of a beating heart, promising a future. If anything positive has emerged from these dark times of Covid-19, it has to be our universally renewed appreciation of nature.

Continue