Time-lapse plants grow on you

It can feel like life is being replayed at time-lapse speed when you’re a parent of young kids, and trying to make a living and develop a garden or a farm at the same time. Days flash by in seconds, weeks seem to take only hours, and before you know it a year has gone by.

Be warned: you’ll have even less time on your hands if you get online and start looking at time-lapse footage of plants, which is disturbingly addictive.

There’s some great educational footage at this website from Indiana University, which shows corn seeds growing the right way up no matter which way you plant them and footage of bees unwittingly getting covered in pollen by the brilliantly designed passionflower (this last one is not technically time lapse, but interesting nonetheless).

 The BBC has heaps of time-lapse clips – plus tips on how to make your own time-lapse films here.

Then there’s YouTube, which can make your life disappear really quickly. Green bean germination is a good one and if you want to watch someone’s zucchinis growing over three weeks of summer, try here (though you are a better man than me if you can last the whole 5:45).

When you get fed up with plants, try the night sky over the ocean. Ain’t nature grand.