Tristan Gooley

makes it richer in nutrients like nitrates and phosphates.

And so stinging nettles are a sign, they're making a map that we're near human beings.

We're near either a farm, a town or a city or something like that.

So we've got a compass and a map from the plant already.

And the seasonal thing with stinging nettles

is they are perennial.

So they can go quite early because they've been saving from the year before.

So they're telling us something about direction.

They're making a map and they're telling us something about time.

They're letting us know we're in the early part of the growth year.

They're a kind of a warning that a lot of other stuff is about to get going.

One of the most powerful things to tune into for all of us is the really rapid change in late March.

So in late March, we have the equinox, which is a word everybody's familiar with, but its true meaning, I think, has been lost.

And what's happening in terms of the signs out there

is the length of day changes more in one week in late March than it does in the whole of the months of June or December.

So it's really, it's a truly dramatic change in the relationship between length of day and night.

And all the plants and animals tune into that.

So that's why we get that really, I mean, we all feel it.

And we've all had that sort of experience where you go, felt like winter two weeks ago, it's feeling much more like spring now.

And that's part of that, because we are, of course, animals.