An app to keep the neighbourhood trees watered, great autumn escapes and more uplifting stories

Good morning.

Have you and your neighbours ever talked about watering the thirsty trees on your street? As we experienced record-breaking heatwaves across Europe this summer, Berlin residents were out watering the neighbourhood trees thanks to the app Gieß den Kiez, or “water your neighbourhood”.

Gieß den Kiez offers real-time watering data, highlighting the saplings in most critical need of refreshment and other useful data to track the state of the trees across the city.

Since its launch in 2020 Gieß den Kiez has kept trees watered with 12,000 users now signed up. Leader of the Gieß den Kiez project Anna Mehrländer has reflected on the multiple benefits the app is having, saying “Watering a tree is a small action that helps your neighbourhood cope as summers get hotter. It also creates community”.

The Guardian newsletters team

From sea​side cottages in Anglesey and Dorset to remote Highland bothies and mountain hideaways in Wales, these ​1​5 great cottages for rent in the UK ​a​re perfect for an autumn escape.

Pen Bonc in ​north Wales is as close to the sea as it is to the local fish and chip shop, while Pippin Cottage near Bude​ is set on a working orchard. Getting out in nature ​i​s a central theme with easy access to beaches, hiking trails, national parks and wildlife-rich landscapes. Many ​c​ottages offer hot tubs, outdoor baths and saunas. ​At Basecamp in the Lake District you can walk an alpaca! Other breaks come with sourdough workshops, wine tastings, yoga sessions​ and dark-sky photography​.

E​njoy the changing season, slow down and reconnect with nature.

Our weekly series The pet I’ll never forget is always a source of joy. And the story of scruffy little terrier Dennis is no exception.

Sophia Money-Coutts got Dennis in 2024 with her then-boyfriend, but within three months the couple had split. “I was distracted from my sadness by this small, bouncy, intensely disobedient dog,” says Money-Coutts, explaining that he raced after every squirrel, raided her bins, licked a man she was dating during an amorous moment, and “once farted on Jilly Cooper’s sofa”.

Dennis had accompanied Money-Coutts, a journalist, to an interview with the animal-loving novelist, whose response was typically indulgent. “It doesn’t matter a bit, does it darling?” she recalls Cooper crying, clutching Dennis closer to her. “He can do whatever he likes.”

Footballer Sam Gough has a remarkable sporting career: from being taken out of PE lessons as her vision deteriorated, to becoming captain of the England women’s blind football team, and one of the global game’s best strikers.

Ahead of the 2026 IBSA Women’s European Championship kicking off in Istanbul on Saturday, the 23-year-old reflects on her achievements on and off the pitch, and what it takes to master a version of the beautiful game that involves eye masks, metal-plated balls and shouts of “Voy!” before every tackle.

The coastline of Achiltibuie, a string of hamlets and villages overlooking Scotland’s Summer Isles, is dotted with beds of maerl – a 9,000-year-old pink seaweed whose coral-like skeleton provide nurseries for scallops and fish. Ten years ago, this biodiverse habitat was being devastated by scallop dredging, until a group of locals successfully fought to have the practice banned in a 600 sq km (150,000 acre) zone – now the biggest protected area in the world for maerl.

They have since seen a dramatic revival of marine life, including the recovery of scallop populations and increased sightings of whales, porpoises and dolphins. Sara Nason, founder of Sea Change (later BHA), one of the groups that led the campaign, says the protection of the maerl beds is “beyond priceless … We’ve achieved recovery of the whole ecosystem.”

Eleven-year-old Bodhana Sivanandan has become the youngest ever ‘woman grandmaster’ at the Chess Olympiad in Uzbekistan – while playing on a car booster seat so she could reach the board.

Sivanandan, who lives in Harrow, was taught to play by her father when she was five. Within a year, she was beating him and by eight she had beaten the former British champion Peter Lee. If she reaches a rating of 2,500 in the next 11 months, she will become the world’s youngest ever outright grandmaster.

She fits her chess career around school, but takes everything in her stride. “Now that I’m in secondary school there might be more homework,” she says, “but I should be able to manage”. Her ultimate ambition, she says, is simply to be the best chess player in the world.