u/Biophysicallove

I am moving from rainy Scotland to Cambridge in the near future. My new house has a massive front lawn. When I went to view the house, it was essentially hay and dust, and I am sure it won't look any better any time soon. It is about 10 m wide, by 6 m deep, a decentish size, south facing, with a pavement/road at the far end. It has zero shade, no trees nothing. The neighbour the other side of the semi detached has tarmaced their front lawn over, with no plants at all, other than some potted lavender.

I don't think a grass lawn, with essentially zero shade, is viable any more in Cambridge. It's a very dry part of the country and prone to 35C+ now. I don't want to look at dead grass 3 months a year.

What could I do with the space that isn't grass centric? I would still like some space for some living (the back garden is somewhat smaller than the front). Any places for inspiration?

I am so so sick of tabloids publishing highly edge case predictions of weather. 4 week forecast outliers which predict 42°C in September and -30C in February etc.

I know the reason they do this is to sell their rags, but it has extremely detrimental effects.

- It fuels climate anxiety. I suffer from this enormously, and the weather is patently shit enough without disinformation being pumped out everywhere. Every time I see these predictions, I have to do a double take, swallow my CBT and realise this is bullshit. However ,for 30 seconds I have a panic and and it takes a mental toll. I try very very hard to avoid this bullshit. But, even if I do avoid it, I still get well meaning mates and family see these, commenting on them, sending me them, and giving me contagious anxiety. This sub could also do a better job of squashing these too.

- It undercuts other reputable meteorological predictions. If there IS a terrible heatwave predicted, many people have become disinterested cause they saw the mirror predict 41C heatwaves every other Tuesday since March. To belabour this point, if everyone took as fact that there's going to be a Siberian blizzard with -29C in February, there would be massive panic buying and chaos. But there never is massive panic buying, because everyone knows it's bullshit. So why print it in the first place?

- Meteorological predictions have a basis in science. We expect a journalistic standard for news media. If they constantly predicted football scores of 10-1 for premiership games, punters would call out their bullshit, but for some reason the weather gets a pass with the general public. There are reputable and highly trusted scientists who are frequently getting their data wilfully misinterpreted.

- In general, those least wealthy suffer the most from climate and the weather. They are also most likely to read this shite. You are essentially giving the most vulnerable misinformation to get their eyeballs attention for 13 seconds.

The tabloids will always put some weasel words disclaimer in the article like "although only a prediction.....here is the exact day the UK will break 42C in 3 weeks time". It's bullshit and should be clamped down on.

/End of rant.

It might just be the ol' Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, but everywhere I go at the moment I am noticing fairly large flocks of starlings. I love starlings and I know they have been declining steeply in recent years, so perhaps it is entirely in my head. I'm in Fife, but I've spotted bog flocks in Angus, Kent and Sussex in the last month.