For about a week, now, I’ve been following a new release of George Orwell’s diary, in the form of a weblog, published exactly 70 years after the dates of the original entries. The contents are awfully appropriate for the format – brief, first-person notes on Orwell’s day-to-day life, with a surprising (to me) amount of emphasis on the developments in the natural world. As in the entry for 17 August, 1938:

Catmint, peppermint & tansies full out. Ragwort & willow-herb going to seed. A few ripe blackberries. Elder-berries beginning to turn purple.

Oak planks etc. made from the boughs instead of the trunk is known as bastard oak & is somewhat cheaper.

The presenters have added hyperlinks to specific useful information, like pages about the plant species mentioned above. And, as if it weren’t blog-like enough already, there are frequently clipped newspaper stories.