Dumfries & Galloway Woodlands is a new initiative looking to support trees, habitats and the people that depend upon them across the region. With support from The National Lottery Heritage Fund and a whole range of partners, the Summer Programme of Events sets out to look at trees in many different ways, celebrating what we know and don’t know about our woodlands.

Tricky Hat Productions is welcoming people aged over 50 to join their performance company The Flames, to create a show that challenges preconceived ideas about how older people think and what their aspirations are.

This issue’s winner is Susan Currie from Dalry with this beautiful snap of a fly agaric mushroom.

CatStrand hosts the exciting launch of Swallows, the Hare and the Moon, the latest album from local singer-songwriter, Blue.

In 'From the Bookroom' Glenkens-based author of the novel The Road From Damascus and co-author of Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War, Robin Yassin-Kassab, takes readers through some of his favourite books. In this edition Robin speaks about author Khaled Khalifa, friendship and the festive season.

I’m now in my third year at CatStrand and it’s been quite the ride!

Did you know that traditional ballads were being sung in Galloway until at least the mid 20th century?

When I first started going to the Writers' Cafe at the CatStrand, I had no idea I would be entering a world of such creativity and imagination.

Lost People, the latest novel by Glenkens-based writer Margaret Elphinstone, is set in a fractured dystopic world but amid trauma and desolation, hope is there to be discovered.

They always say Ritual Purposes when they haven’t a clue. Anyway we know that right through the Modern Period they kept symbols of time worship on all their major edifices. The reconstruction - look, here it is - suggests it was a tower with four Time Circles, one facing each cardinal point.. Plus the cast-iron bells. And that time capsule thing - bit like burying your ancestors under the hearthstone I suppose.