This week, I'm going to depart from the advice, and lead by example. There's a reason: I have become heartily weary of what passes for 'nature writing' in this world. Most general writing that attempts to include 'nature' – meaning, one supposes, anything not human-made – seems to fall into two categories:

1. An opportunity for the writer to show off his/her sensitivity by emoting gushily over the beauty of the bird/butterfly/landscape/and etc.
2. A chance for the writer to reel off a list of specialized technical names for plants and animals, thus demonstrating that said writer knows how to google. This also has the desireable side effect of making the writer look patriotic, particularly if the book is British. Everyone knows that the British have all the really cool plants and birds.

As I said, this is getting up my nose. Furthermore, I've just spent the week learning about bumblebees. Bumblebees are so amazingly, fantastically supercool that the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's Earth Edition won't be complete without an Entry on them, which it hasn't got yet because I've been writing for ESL learners. No planet should be without these incredible critturs. So, I'm going to kill two birds with one stone – quiet in the back, that's only a metaphor – by showing you what I mean about 'nature writing', while telling you a bit about bumbly bees.

The moral is supposed to be: writing about 'nature' need be neither self-serving nor boring. See if you agree.

Excerpt from a Novel Called Romance in the Home Counties

'Ooh, ooh, school's out for summer! Hurray!'

'Last one around the garden is a wet sock!'

'Get off my foot, Nate, you oaf!'

Reg looked up, and closed his book for a sigh. His sister's brood were back from school. That's the end of my peace and quiet, he thought wearily. No matter how cheery Hermione sounded when she asked him round, 'to take your mind off Cheryl and just relax', Reg knew that she secretly wanted a free babysitter. He forced a smile as her three monstrous offspring made a beeline for his chaise lounge. Suzy bounded onto his lap and planted a rather sloppy kiss on his cheek.

'Hullo, Uncle Reg,' she said. He smiled, more genuinely this time. Suzy, five, was all right. It was the two older ones that caused him to wonder about the vagaries of Smith genetics. Pudgy eight-year-old Nate stalked around the garden, monarch of all he surveyed, while Arabella, eleven, studied the azaleas with the air of a haughty judge at the village fair. All she needs is a flowered hat and a pair of spectacles, he thought. Her greeting over, Suzy slid off his lap and, dog-like, crawled in the direction of the tomato plants.

Arabella sniffed. 'These azaleas aren't a patch on Mrs Entwhistle's,' she remarked. 'Mother really should try some of that new plant food.' She lifted one eyebrow –   she's been practising in the mirror again, thought Reg – in what she no doubt believed to be a superior way. Further discussion of agricultural innovation was cut short by a laugh from Nate, who had stopped next to his baby sister, while both studied the long, yellow blossoms of a tomato plant.

'Gor! Look at the fat bumblebee! Fat, fat, the water rat…He's so fat, he's bending the flower!'

At this point, Reg resolutely refused even to think about pots and kettles. Instead, he remembered that he was a biology teacher in a previous life – before Cheryl and the farm, and all that fiasco. So he joined the others beside the tomatoes, where he admired the twenty-millimeter insect, whose bright orange-and-black-striped, very fuzzy body, was, indeed, hanging from a tomato flower.

'You're wrong about that,' he told Nate. 'It's not bending the flower because it's fat. It's doing something rather clever.'

;'Huh?' was Nate's sagacious response. The idea of a clever bumblebee had not occurred to him, he not being very clever himself. 'What's it doing that's so clever?'

'Yes, Uncle Reg, tell us,' commanded Arabella, arranging herself decorously on the grass.

'It's pollinating,' said Reg. 'It's pollinating a particularly stroppy kind of plant.'

Suzy clapped her hands and laughed. 'Why's the plant stroppy?' she wanted to know. Reg pulled a pigtail teasingly.

'Because it's making it hard to get to the pollen,' he explained. 'D'you see how long this flower is? '

'Trumpet-shaped,' put in Arabella. Reg nodded.

'Yes, trumpet-shaped. Trumpet-shaped flowers are harder to pollinate, because the pollen's all down in the bottom of that trumpet. So the bumblebee uses a clever trick.'

'What kind of trick?' asked Nate suspiciously. He was beginning to find this clever Dick of a bumblebee irritating, Reg could tell.

Reg grinned. 'She's doing it now.' He pointed to where the pendulous bee hung from the flower, which was vibrating slightly. Reg cupped his hand over one ear. 'What do you hear?'

The children liked games, and this was a game. They all shouted together, 'Buzzing!'

Reg nodded. 'It's buzz-pollinating the tomatoes. You see,' he went on, 'that buzzing sound comes from the bee shaking. The louder it buzzes, the harder it's shaking. And it's shaking the flower the same way. If you watch closely, you can see the pollen come out.' Sure enough, in a moment, a tiny yellow cloud puffed out of the bloom. Now the bumblebee was covered in sticky yellow dust. Suzy chuckled, while's Nate's eyes narrowed.

'Now it's all covered with the stuff,' he remarked. 'Messy.'

Reg nodded. 'Messy, yes. But that's why bees have pocket combs.'

Arabella rolled her eyes. 'Pocket combs? Oh, come on, Uncle Reg!'

It was Reg's turn to chuckle. 'In a manner of speaking. Bumblebees' pocket combs are on their back legs. Now the bee will comb all the pollen from its fuzz and put it in the pollen baskets on its legs. Then it will go to the next flower.' As they watched, it did this. He went on, 'But of course, it won't get all the pollen. Just enough will be left on the bee to share with the next flower. Which is why it's called pollination.'

Arabella frowned in concentration, and then delivered her judgement. 'You know, this just might work.' Reg laughed.

Suzy studied the recently-pollinated bloom. Reg studied Suzy with a growing sense of precognition. He was just in time to stop the plump little hand before it plucked the flower 'to take to Mommy'.

'No, dear,' he whispered. 'You like tomatoes, don't you?' Suzy nodded energetically. 'Then let the flower make one.'

Hermione called from the kitchen, something cheery with lemonade in. As he and Suzy followed the two older children into the house, hand in hand, Reg reflected:

Perhaps Cheryl was right. Maybe I'm ready to be both a farmer and a father, just the way I am. While the others were washing up, Reg went to find his mobile. He had a phone call to make.

So What?

Not much, probably. But I do hope that you can see that nature, process and all, can be incorporated into a story without necessarily being highfalutin', scientific, or a complete bore.

For a change, let's keep the discussion non-theoretical, but I'd welcome a paragraph or two from you, if you'd like to try your hand at this sort of thing.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

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