Addis Ababa is the capital city of Ethiopia and its name, in the Amharic language, means ‘new flower’. 

SOME people talk to their house plants and, even if you don’t, you would probably describe a geranium that’s wilting as ‘not looking happy’. 

HEATHER was a female hen harrier, she was also the star of an online blogspot with around a quarter of a million followers.

LAST YEAR the company that collects my rubbish stopped doing so. When I phoned them to ask why, they said the driver of the bin lorry had objected to having his vehicle damaged by overgrown hedges.

I WAS cleaning out my greenhouse, because, in a few weeks’ time, I’ll be switching on the heater and germinating the first seeds of the year.

FOR MOST of history we have been firmly convinced that we are completely different to animals. This has been reinforced by various theologies — in the Christian world it’s expressed by the idea that mankind was created as an image of God.

We’ve reached that time of year again — people meet and say, often with a touch of anxiety, ‘I think there’s a bit of a stretch in the evenings’.

To escape the cold I migrated south to the Canary Islands for a couple of weeks.

THE arrival of any new species of animal or plant in this country is almost invariably greeted with alarm by the authorities.

A friend invited me round for afternoon tea. Actually, that’s not precisely accurate – she really invited me round to admire the new tree she’d planted and we didn’t drink tea, we drank wine. But afternoon tea sounds better, doesn’t it?