February

"Beauty is not only formal, and lies not only in the superficial qualities that are appealing to the eye or ear, it lies in patterns of meaning, in evocations of values, and its connection to the life the reader is living and the world she wants to see." Rebecca Solnit (2022). Orwell's Roses. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) 2024.

September

"For the eye has this strange property: it rests only on beauty; like a butterfly it seeks colour and basks in warmth." Virginia Wolf (1930) in The Essays of Virginia Wolf: volume IX. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

July

"Particular attention should be paid to the material used, for good craftsmanship is built on natural foundations, and nature assures the material's quality. (...) When a certain locality is rich in a certain raw material, that material gives rise to a certain craftware. It is this resources, the gift of nature, that are the veritable mother of craftwork." Soetsu Yanagi (2018). The Beauty of Everyday Things.  

Photos by Monica Pinheiro, free to use if you respect the license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

March

Call it what you will - futures, utopias, dreams - but remeber they "are imperfect, they are imaginative, they are joyful and wild, they are shamelessly emotive, and they are growing up through the cracks in extractivist capitalism." So today, like Malaika Cunningham, I invite you "to look for the roses around you. Those things which bring you pleasure, meaning and peace for no discernible reason other than they are beautiful and, for this, they make your world better." in Bread & Roses. Image of organic city garden, taken March 1, 2022, by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).

December

"Don't let the beauty of life escape you." Let Nature be "the temple that is. Marvel at the fact that any of this exists - that you exist." Ryan Holiday (2019). Stillness is the Key. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

Cooling

Green Up to Cool Down: United in Action, webinar registration. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

July

There is a small forest in the city "(...) that has a shade of green for every possible felicitation of light;" Zadie Smith, 2006. On Beauty. Penguin Books. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

March

"When one becomes a child of nature, one is encompassed by a natural beauty that only nature can give. The more one returns to the bosom of nature, the more intense that beauty becomes." (Soetso Yanagi, 2018. The Beauty of Everyday Things. Penguin Classics. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

August

"The sun glistens on the leaves in a way I've never seen. It's real. Not like the sun in the Dome. (...) Mother Nature is always one step ahead when it comes to beauty. She's quite the artist." Giovanna and Tom Fletcher, 2018. Eve of Man. Penguin Books. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)