Every Monday of 2020, at 1.30pm, I have taken a photo of the view from my balcony. At the time I started this I didn’t know what kind of year 2020 was going to be.

Outside my window is Parcul Natural Vacaresti (Vacaresti Nature Park), a unique wetland near the city centre of Bucharest, a place that nature took over when the original project to develop it was abandoned (read more here, https://parcnaturalvacaresti.ro/en/brief-history).

The year started with an unusually dry and warm winter, then a significant fire in February that consumed more than half of the park, before a regeneration, that by the end of the year had made me forget it had ever happened.

When we entered lockdown in March, there was something soothing about the sight of this landscape and seeing how nature went on with its life regardless. As restrictions were relaxed, the park came into its own as a place for people to safely exercise or allow children to play, teenagers to meet surreptitiously.

After the green renewal, came the hot summer days, the browns of autumn, and the occasional snow-covered winter. Above all, life continues, we adapt, we move on.