Street cafés and summer is coming!

Sadly, the initial excitement over being allowed out of our houses with the easing of the lockdown seems to have worn off here. With more people going back to work, fewer people are taking to the streets. That’s not the case everywhere however, with streets having been closed to traffic and sidewalk restrictions relaxed in cities around the world to ease social distancing. The famous street cafés of Paris expanded when only outdoor dining was allowed and most people are only too happy to keep the cars out. Some worry that the newly-pedestrianized public spaces will still be contested though, if only by people seated in café chairs vs prams.  

My second lockdown e-book was The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf, who has written several books about gardens and gardeners. The Invention of Nature is a biography of the Prussian Alexander von Humboldt (1769 – 1859) who, no, didn’t invent nature - that might be pushing it a bit – but was by this account one of the first people to perceive the interconnectedness of living things at a time when botanists and zoologists had their hands full describing and categorizing species. Perhaps to say he invented the field of ecology would be less of a hyperbole. Alexander far preferred to live in Paris than his native Berlin, and the café society there amazed and charmed visitors back then too - Frenchmen seemed to live outside, did they only use their houses to sleep in?! Plus ça change…

It was the winter solstice here in the southern hemisphere on Saturday, so things will start to get brighter and warmer for us. Remember, getting outside can ward off those blues, whether lockdown or winter-related. Below is the same space featured last month, in summer this time.

Stay safe!

Stuart

Songshan Riverfront - summer.