Sheila Pinder
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sheilab01.bsky.social
Sheila Pinder
@sheilab01.bsky.social
780 followers 1.1K following 1.2K posts
Personal account: publishing industry; Scottish creative industries; metadata & supply chain.
Also following climate, biodiversity & nature writing conversations.
Gardener; educator; recovering carer; parkrunner. Based in Scotland & Cumbria.
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sheilab01.bsky.social
My haul from a visit to Hodges Figgis.
Books from an English, a Scottish and an Irish publisher.

(Sounds like the start of one of the terrible jokes my Dad used to tell in the 70s.)

Meanwhile... what a bookshop, and what a showcase for Irish books
The spines of three new paperback books in front of a Hodges Figgis bag. Image shows the publishers colophons rather than the full totle/author.
November 15, 2025 at 7:26 PM
sheilab01.bsky.social
Train reading (en route to a funeral). Given my mood and the state of the world, I needed something with a thread of hope.
Will report back.
Cover of AL Kennedy's Alive in the Merciful Country depicts a sunrise (or sunset) sky in apricot hues. Bottom left of the cover is a dome (possibly St Paul's?) And flying birds are silhouettes against the sky).
October 5, 2025 at 2:05 PM
sheilab01.bsky.social
And it's worth it for the extraordinarily beautiful moments, like this one last summer.
Dappled white clouds making a variety of patterns over a blue sky. In the foreground is a rose garden with apricot coloured roses and a metal obelisk. In the mid distance towers a large ash tree.
October 4, 2025 at 11:13 AM
sheilab01.bsky.social
Today, I will mostly be baking French apple cake.
#StormAmy
Had to pick fruit slightly before full ripeness: the wind took down one of the upright posts on the espalier frame. Thought we were going to lose three trees to being uprooted, so had to take the weight off.
A mixture of apples laid out on the counter tops. In the foreground is a browny-green russet variety. Others are a variety of shades of red and green.
October 4, 2025 at 9:24 AM
sheilab01.bsky.social
Reminder: there is beauty in this world.
Sunset of deep orange and ochre over the North Cumbrian Fells looking towards Scotland. In the foreground, the boughs and leaves of an ash tree appear in silhouette and frame the top of the picture.
September 13, 2025 at 6:57 PM
sheilab01.bsky.social
Reading @clairekc.bsky.social & #ZoeVenditozzi How to Kill a Witch.
The passage about obsequious flattery feels horribly contemporary in the US context.

Loving the combination of serious research with wry tone. May not be helping me manage my rage at the patriarchy..
Highlighted passage of text from How to Kill a Witch.
June 12, 2025 at 7:51 PM
sheilab01.bsky.social
@chloelewis.bsky.social here's my all-time favourite Helenium/ hoverfly combo
Hoverfly...visiting pollinator on selenium. The centre of the flower looks like a yelloe and dark red Jupiter: it's almost spherical. The hoverfly's compound eyes take up most of its head.
April 5, 2025 at 5:06 PM
sheilab01.bsky.social
Pear blossom opened today: already attracting visitors.
#AFLOWERSOMEDAYS2025
Pear blossom just opening. Tge flowers have curved white petals u curling to reveal the stamens and anthers. A pollinator is clinging to the petals, sunshine making its transparent veined wings glint. The photo is sufficiently close-up for the fine hairs on its abdomen to be visible. At the head end, the grey compound eyes wrap around the head so much they seem to be on the back of the head.
April 5, 2025 at 4:42 PM
sheilab01.bsky.social
#AFLOWERADAY2025
March 17th
Momentum is building... flowering currant on its way...
Pendulous pink flower structure (called a dangling raceme) of flowering currant. Before the flowers open, the raceme looks like a tight bunch of miniature grapes, but elongates and becomes less crowded as the individual florets bloom. In this example, the flowers at the top are open, and those at the tip are in bud. The leaf to the left has a thick, coarse texture, with deep-set veins, a bit like a raspberry leaf.
March 17, 2025 at 7:14 PM
sheilab01.bsky.social
I'd love to say I came back from #LBF at Olympia and romped home with my best #parkrun time of the year. The accurate version is that after a week of rushing round & London pavements, I'm stiff & sore, and it was a slog.
But it was the most glorious morning at Talkin Tarn, so who cares about times?
Colourful laced trail shoes on the front doorstep beside a greenish grey salt glaze planter with violas & daffodils. The pattern on the shoes hides all the mud.
March 15, 2025 at 12:32 PM
sheilab01.bsky.social
#AFLOWERADAY2025
March 12th
Camelia spotted en route to #LBF25 at Olympia this morning
Delicate pink camelia with densely overlapping slightly pointy petals in a rosette.
March 12, 2025 at 9:24 AM
sheilab01.bsky.social
Ah yes, I remember. The queues, the shouting. LBF still hasn't got the welcome international visitors in style thing cracked...
Airport style queue management outside Olympia. At least it's not raining...
March 11, 2025 at 9:20 AM
sheilab01.bsky.social
It may look peaceful, but Monty's head is incredibly heavy, and I am pinned in position.
Bernese mountain dog fast asleep with his chin on his owner's legs.
March 8, 2025 at 9:59 PM
sheilab01.bsky.social
No wonder Trump hates Zelensky. Zelensky is a poet and an orator. Trump is a bully and a bore.
Quote from Zelensky: "Freedom is not about having unshackled hands. Freedom is about having unshackled minds."
March 7, 2025 at 9:10 PM
sheilab01.bsky.social
Tonight's read, freshly arrived from @biggreenbooks.bsky.social
The front cover of the recent paperback edition of Volodymyr Zelensky's A Message from Ukraine. A simple cover design, bordered by the yellow and blue of Ukraine's national flag.
March 7, 2025 at 7:29 PM
sheilab01.bsky.social
#AFLOWERADAY2025
March 2nd
Bud-like female hazel flower, with its magenta styles like a land-lubbing sea anemone.
#WildflowerHour
Tiny greenish flower of hazel protruding from a bare twig. The tiny, filament-like magenta styles of the flower are clustered at the end. The background is blurred.
March 2, 2025 at 8:36 PM
sheilab01.bsky.social
Here's one I was looking at carefully a few hours ago
The tiny red female flower parts of a Hazel emerging from a greenish bud that swells out of a twig of last year's woody growth. The flower parts, which look like tufts of cotton, are just a few millimetres long, and the background of other twigs and branches is completely blurred.
March 2, 2025 at 3:43 PM
sheilab01.bsky.social
Starting my get faster in Parkrun @61 campaign by marshalling station 5 at the top of the hill at #talkintarnparkrun this morning. It's a glorious spot!
Less pretty, I get to see what people look like on their way up!
#Parkrun
Panoramic view of the north pennine hills from a hill by Talkin Tarn. The sky is a mix of light cloud with gaps of blue. Around me, scrubby woodland of Hazel and birch is full of birdsong. On the tarn I can hear the creak and clank as fours and double sculls are rowed up and down.
March 1, 2025 at 8:48 AM
sheilab01.bsky.social
#AFLOWERADAY2025
7th February
Snowdrops *and* Hellebore *and* sunshine. What's not to love?
#Cumbria
In the foreground is a clump.of white snowdrops, the flowers wide and bell-like in the sun. Blurred in rge background, in front of a drystone wall are taller red Hellebores
February 7, 2025 at 6:45 PM
sheilab01.bsky.social
#AFLOWERADAY2025
February 5th
A sudden burst of sunshine highlights an unexpected and ridiculously hardy red deadnettle.
Tiny mauve flowers on aired deadnettle plant in the grass verge. The green leaves are coarse, hairy, and partly blackened by recent frosts.
February 5, 2025 at 10:11 PM
sheilab01.bsky.social
#AFLOWERADAY2025
New flowers seen today: 0
Promises of new flowers seen today: many
A clump of the dislinctive blade-like foliage and buds of daffodils in a leaf-strewn roadside verge. The yellow flowers can't be many days away.
February 4, 2025 at 9:17 PM
sheilab01.bsky.social
#AFLOWERADAY2025
February 2nd
No new flowers today, but the mosses & lichens are incredible... like the sea urchins of Cumbrian country lanes.
#Cumbria
Centrally, we see a sage-gree.m lichen structure formed of tuber-like structures. At the base is a darker green moss and behind the roughness of a stone wall.
February 2, 2025 at 8:49 PM
sheilab01.bsky.social
#AFLOWERADAY2025
February 1st
Kicking off the new month with a pretty star-like saxifrage at the garden centre.
Single flower of saxifrage. Five petals like a five point star, deep pink at the tips fading to white towards the green central circle where the reproductive parts of the flower are.
February 1, 2025 at 2:51 PM
sheilab01.bsky.social
#AFLOWERADAY2025
January 31st
Early morning Winter Aconites, waiting for sunlight to open their petals.
By the memorial to the three men lost in the Roachburn Pit flooding on 28th January 1908. I love that this verge is planted with something that is in flower on the anniversary.
#Cumbria
Yellow winter aconite flowers against their rosettes of green foliage growing amongst the bark-and leaf fall of a banked roadside verge. In the background to the right are two tree trunks, and to the left, the simple stone memorial to the Roachburn Pit flooding. Memorial consists of a stone base, two side supports, and a triangular stone top. On the triangular stone is a metal plaque giving details of the three men lost.
January 31, 2025 at 3:51 PM
sheilab01.bsky.social
#AFLOWERADAY2025
January 30th
Heather
A day at my late mother's house finishing getting it ready for its new owner tomorrow.
The end of an era, and likely the last photo I'll take of the extraordinary variety of plants in her fellside garden.
Clusters of mauve heather flowers growing on the low scrubby stems with spiny dark green, needle-like foliage. Each individual mauve floret has a deep purple tip.
January 30, 2025 at 8:24 PM