Hello,
I could not wait to write again. It actually felt really good to introduce myself in my first letter — so much so that I was telling Mr. Dandelion why we have not done this sooner. At that, he smiled and nodded in agreement.
This is the thing about Mr. Dandelion: although everyone here finds him a little loud in his appearance and his positive charms, deep down he is a very good listener. He rarely interrupts, and he is hardly ever in a rush to give advice. Which I find refreshing. Because the Nettlekind in my village simply love giving advice. Which is understandable — they know so much — but sometimes it gets tiring.
Hence why, when Mr. Dandelion first appeared, I was instantly taken aback. He was a traveler, as many of his relatives are. They seem to like adventure, which is exciting of course. I have always dreamed of travelling far and wide, and dreamed of flying, without quite understanding whether it is actually a possibility. And this is perhaps why I was so drawn to Mr. Dandelion — because he is specialised in aeronautics. His lifelong project is how to fly little parcels using something resembling an umbrella. Something about the wind catching it and carrying it up into the air. The struggle, of course, is how to control the wind, and the trial parcels have always ended up exactly where you do not want them. But he is working on it, and I am sure that in the future we shall have a seamless delivery system.
Oh, and I do love a good system.
Maybe this is another reason why Mr. Dandelion and I make such a good team. I believe a good system removes effort from day-to-day tasks, so you can get on with what is truly important in life. But I shall touch on that some other time. Perhaps I could write a whole book about building systems — oh, but wait. Would that not be me giving advice? You see. It is in my blood. I cannot help it.
But anyway.
Perfect partnerships — or dream teams, as we call them — are all over nature. And lately, being outside more than usual (this is what I like to do when everything is in bloom), walking and thinking, I have been noticing them everywhere. The most resilient things, I have found, rarely grow alone.
Take lichen, for example. I passed a great old stone on my walk the other morning, entirely covered in it. You have probably seen lichen too — that quiet grey-green crust (or sometimes yellow, in more urban places) on rocks and bark and old walls. Have you ever stopped to really look at it? Its immense texture, up close? Or is it only me? They are really, really beautiful if you look closer.
But did you know that lichen is not one thing? It is two. A fungus and an alga, living so closely together that they appear as a single being entirely. The fungus provides structure and shelter. The alga provides food, made from light. Neither could survive in that place without the other. And yet together, they can grow on bare rock, in the harshest cold, in the driest conditions. They are among the oldest living things on earth.
I find this quietly extraordinary.
A note for your next walk
Find a stone, a wall, or an old tree somewhere that has been left undisturbed for a while. Look for the lichen.
Get as close as you can. Notice the texture — it is almost a tiny landscape of its own, with ridges and valleys and quiet colours. Grey, green, sometimes orange or yellow depending on where you are and how the light falls.
You do not need to do anything with it. Just look. That is quite enough.
In other news, you will not believe what I found out about the ants quite recently. Rather disappointing, I must admit. Turns out the sugar crystals are not the only thing they steal.
The other day I popped over to the forest beehive for a cup of nectar, as I always do. The bees are always so welcoming, but I was rather surprised to find an ant lurking in the corner. I will be honest, I did not know where to look. And I was even more surprised by the bees' reaction. They were calm, not paying much attention to the ant at all. I naturally enquired why on earth they would allow such a thing. And only then did the queen bee sit and explain. Honey is not the worst thing to steal, she said. It is simply not worth our energy to fight for it.
Everyone went quiet, drinking their nectars, listening to the soft hum of the worker bees.
I thought about that on my walk home. About the things worth fighting for. And the things that simply are not.
With warmth,
Mrs Nettle
