Five blogs to follow

January 2026 marks five years since I started posting on this site. I began with regular blogs and in due course added various pages. My posts range through short fiction, essay-type reflections, garden musings, updates on current activities, interviews with interesting people, and occasional thoughts on the process of writing. The pages are home to information about specific projects as well as images and videos. In a sense, the site has become somewhat like a garden. It needs tending and curating, a periodic tidy up, and if suitably looked after can give significant pleasure to its creator as well as those who drop by on a visit.

I won’t strain the metaphor too much further, other than to say that like a garden, the blog is also a wonderful way to create communities of people with shared or over-lapping preoccupations, enthusiasms, and passions. Of course the blogosphere is vast and varied. I’m particularly attracted to the parts that offer space for quiet reflection, story telling, chronicling and the respectful sharing of ideas. In this spirit, I offer some thoughts on five specific blogs that I follow with keen interest, and where I enjoy a sense of community with their authors.

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While I was Gardening This wonderful site is the work of Deb, (or tagpipspearl to use her soubriquet). She is a horticulturalist, gardener, and much more, based in Washington State, USA. I think it was a shared interest in the wonderful Camassia plant that first connected us. Over the last few years I have followed the writings of Deb as she ranges across a wide variety of topics and experiences. Her in-depth horticultural knowledge never gets in the way of stories about the garden and the natural environment around her. She writes about work on her own patch as well as visits to other botanical gems, trips to the coast and the walking of trails. In the last year she has shared some of the personal pain that comes with the Trump administration, and holds fast to the motto Illegitimi non carborundum. Deb is a prolific blogger, hard to keep up with at times. But I try to read her every post, feeling a sense of connection between her gardening in the Pacific North West and mine in Scotland’s South West. Her posts are redolent with a passion for plants and trees, respect for nature and commitment to protecting it. My connection with this blog came entirely through my own online activity and is all the more cherished by distance and encounters through the written word.

Carruchan (at least one meaning of which seems to be ‘stony ground’) is a blog by Stephen Shellard, which I first encountered after I read his excellent memoir about coming of age in Northern Ireland during the time of The Troubles. Carruchan is a diverse and regular offering of writings that range from careful thinking on matters of political economy, to the specifics of current affairs, accounts of book launches and festivals, reviews of podcasts, poetry readings and concerts attended. Stephen is incredibly adept at producing deep dives into, as he puts it, ‘Whatever’s on my mind …’ As someone, like me, who has lived in Dumfries and Galloway for several years, he presents a fascinating window into the life of the region, expertly weaving his local observations into a wider understanding of the social, historical and geographical context. It’s always a pleasure to see notice of his latest offering as it drops into the email.

Sabr (meaning patience in Urdu, Hindustani, Persian, and Arabic) is a care collaborative which focuses on the question: ‘how can we re-think, politically engage with, and collectively organise care for the people in contemporary societies?’ I was drawn to the site by one of its contributors, a good friend and colleague, Devi Vijay, with whom I have collaborated on numerous palliative care research projects over the years. The collaborative got started in December 2023 and has created a shared platform for academics, practitioners, activists and policy-makers on issues concerning rights and justice in care provision. Devi and her co-workers have put together a rich and varied offering comprising blogs, links to key publications, podcasts and videos. At year end they also added a terrific listing of books read in 2025 along with movies recommended, and a playlist, described as ‘a motley bunch of songs … about the thriving more-than-human world around us, protest, hope, and revolution.’ The regular blog posts present fine-grained accounts of the realties of giving and receiving care in a wide variety of social contexts, especially in India. Somehow, they dig below the conventions of academic writing to present worlds and experiences close up and fine-grained. ‘Care’ is a complex issue and a ‘wicked’ policy problem. Sabr explores it with fresh eyes and new perspectives.

Enjoying Wildlife is a superbly crafted collection of blog posts in which a neighbour of mine, Barbara Mearns, draws on in-depth observations of flora, fauna and weather to evoke the natural history of the Nith valley in Dumfries and Galloway. Barbara’s nature writing draws deeply on her skills as a poet and is often accompanied by stunning images of her subject matter. Her posts take us on walks close to home, share the practice of surveying species of birds and insects, and provide close encounters with the changing dynamics of the natural world. Barbara’s most recent book is a beautiful collection of peatland poems. Her commitment to understanding nature close by combines with Barbara’s writing talents to produce a steady gaze and the facility to share insights with others: in prose, poetry and the spoken word.

Michael Bloor Michael Bloor and I have been friends since the early 1980s, when we worked in adjacent offices in the MRC Medical Sociology Unit, in Aberdeen. I regard him as one of the most talented sociologists of his generation, whose skills and scholarship are beautifully captured in his Selected Writings Just occasional hints of these academic achievements can be found on his blog, which is in effect a repository of short fiction, historical insights, imagined encounters, personal memoir and frequent injections of couthy humour and superb bon mots. Widely published in online magazines, Michael’s writing comes in a steady flow of creativity and imagination that never fails to intrigue, delight and sometimes puzzle the reader (in the best possible way). He has kindly gathered all this together on one single site that is full of literary pleasures.

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I thank the writers of these five blogs for sharing so many different perspectives and subjects, from the local to the global, and for the sense of community they create. I am indebted to them for the inspiration they bring to my own efforts. In what Anthony Giddens called a runaway world they provide anchors for good reasoning, compassion, and progressive values. Check them out too for reading delights, irony and humour, and not least, those occasional quirky perspectives that illuminate the day!