The healing qualities of nature

I'm glad nature has helped you, nankate. Here's a trcik for not getting dirty fingernails when gardening (I don't use it but one of my neighbours does. I just get mucky): scrape your nails over a bar of soap before you start! Alternatively, wear gardening gloves. You can get quite lightweight ones. Have fun! Mucking about with plants is good for the soul

NanKate

I have created a little 'haven' at the bottom of my garden. I fenced off this area and planted shrubs along the fence line for extra privacy. And then I planted it out in flowers and shrubs that are fragment, such as Choisya, lavender, Rosemary, old musk roses, climbing roses, mint, chamomile, etc.

I have an old swing seat and bird feeders. I love to chill out in this special area and watch the birds such as robins and blue tits as they visit the feeders or gather mealy worms I've spread under the trees. I've come to know individual birds, such as a male blackbird with a leg he drags behind him.

It is the place where I can relax most in all the world and feel the healing qualities of nature that you describe. So yes, you are spot on. Best of luck with your tree spotting - and I think you'll that there are even many different kinds of 'fir' trees

all we need is some sunshine to enjoy nature even more!

I love gardening too, you can buy very thin gloves like dentists and surgeons wear and they help keep your hands clean. I have a robin who follows me around when I am working and he chatters to me, picks up grubs that I cannot see he comes very close and I feel so honoured that he trusts me to come that close. When the grandchildren were down we saw a tiny frog no bigger than an inch so beautiful.

Its food for the soul that's for sure, our garden is totally secluded at this time of the year and although currently quite overgrown as we have been away for a number of weeks , I can sit and watch the comings and goings forever.

We too have a friendly robin( or robins as it happens) and they feed from a feeder stuck on the outside of the lounge window, a source of endless entertainment.

I've also found nature healing and calming NanKate. I have a tree book which I still find very useful, which I take out and about - Hamlyn Guide to Trees of Great Britain and Europe (ISBN 978-0-7537-2528-3)

I bought a whole box of latex gloves from a market stall for £1 which I use for gardening. They are brilliant as you don't lose the sense of touch. If they get very dirty I chuck them out but usually I just keep them on and wash my hands wearing them, with soap and water and then can re-use them.

I had a tame robin in our Yorkshire garden who would fly to my hand and take food from it. We also had a family of blackbirds in our next house in Bedfordshire, who followed us around the garden and would come and eat crumbs from the floor around the patio table. The birds here in Hampshire seem to be more inclined to throw themselves against the patio doors. We have two fatalities
in the last three days. Makes me very sad.

Yestrday morning I went down to make the tea at 6.30 and there was a buzzard on the lawn; he sat there for about 20 minutes. I had been awake since 5 am because a cuckoo has taken up residence in one of our trees. The beautiful redstarts have been nesting in the walls of the house as they do every year and we have barn owls a plenty.
The garden here nurtures and sustains us in good times and bad. Everything is late this year, but we have so much salad that we are sending it to market with our neighbour tomorrow.
I wish I could find gardening gloves that lasted longer than a couple of months though.

NanaandGrampy thought about getting one of these because I feed the robin in the morning, we breakfast together, and I get a lot of exercise chasing the wood doves/magpies away, but wondered if the window gets dirty with bird poo? Do not like cleaning windows.

I'm glad you're feeling better with the help of the wildlife in your garden, NanKate. I am another one that can't identify trees. Most wild flowers and just about all wild birds, even from their song, but just about the only trees I can identify are the usual oak, chestnut and birch. I think I'll get a book too. Can you still get I-spy books? Like you I hate getting my fingernails dirty, but I find gardening gloves a pain in the neck, so I, too, wear latex gloves. They're not very hard wearing (especially around roses) but brilliant while they last, then you chuck 'em away! The soap tip is one I'll have to try, though.

Nankate , nature is healing . I help run a drop in centre for people with problems, worries , depression, anxiety, grief etc. We do craft work, baking , have board games on the go, take walks on the mountains , visit gardens open to the public and have an allotment, it's the walks , gardens and allotment which come top, I am trying to get a second one from the council - blood from a stone - I have a passion for trees , with the trees come wildlife too, it is a beautiful world X

Also Vitamin D stops depression so getting out in the sun is always good for you, don't completely cover up so some of your skin can absorb it. A surprising number of people have a Vit D deficiency because of all the fuss about skin cancer. I am not saying it is unnecessary fuss as my OH has had problems but the experts are backing off a bit now.

I use old rubber gloves for gardening. Mind you I am usually out hanging the washing on the line, see a few weeds, and before I know it, I have a handful of weeds, filthy hands and ruined nails.

The weather has not been conducive to gardening in the past week. A flash flood has deposited a lot of mud at the end of the garden which makes it impossible for me to access my shed, for fear of slipping. The pot plants are recovering from the torrential rain. There are lots of young birds, newly fledged blue and great tits mainly. I suddenly noticed today how fast they had emptied the bird feeders.

We live in the country and I take great pleasure in walking around the area every day to see what's new. I think I'm more interested in the plant life than the animal life, though my best find yesterday was a beautiful damselfly. Navyblue wings and bright turquoise body.
fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calopteryx_splendens
I saw it (a male) flying over a stream.
I wonder if it's because it's new life every spring/ summer?

I can understand this being with nature thing, sometimes it just being outside on a fine day or admiring one of myfavourite garden plants when they come into flower. Our lovely lush early summers in the UK summer. Lovely landscapes.

It does appear that there seems to be a good effect of this but to get real testable evidence is difficult with regard to proof.

www.fph.org.uk/uploads/bs_great_outdoors.pdf

My reaction is that does not have to be provable if people report feeling better.
I suspect in our distant ancestors there were genes for enjoying pretty things and striving to improve our envoronment, which have been handed down to us.

DannieRae that's me as well.

Yes Greyduster the I spy books are still available published by Michelin I bought my grandsons the book on animals for them to identify animals in the Zoo last weekend. There is also one for car journeys which I will get for them. You can get them in WHSmith. I found them by the Atlas books in a little box and you just sort through to find the topic you want. They cost £2.50 so it won't break the bank.

Thanks for the suggestions on the gloves which I will buy this week.

Anya your haven sounds idyllic just the place to sit and contemplate. I fancy getting a small Buddha to plonk by our sunny garden room but DH would think I had totally lost it if one appeared. One of our neighbours has got a life size Buddha in his garden, he looks very serene, the Buddha not the neighbour.

I love your robin feeder Nana

I'll look for those, NanKate! We went for a walk yesterday just to get out of the house between the downpours. I wasn't particularly up for it as I felt rather down yesterday, but once we were out it lifted my mood considerably. And there were surprises. We have a reed bed about half a mile from our house which was established about two or three years ago, as part of a small nature reserve, and yesterday we actually heard, and caught a fleeting glimpse of, a reed warbler. I had always hoped this would happen - I've never seen or heard one outside the Norfolk Marshes, and now they are on my doorstep. I hope it has a mate. Then we saw a woodpecker, a pair of swans with four cygnets, and a family of ducklings.

I too find the outdoors very useful if I feel a bit low, and we are lucky because we can just open a door and the garden is there, I know a lot of you are the same, but I always pity people who live in flats and do not have access to an "out door" door; just to walk round our small garden lifts the spirits, and ours is nothing special.

TriciaF I was interested to see your damsel fly - I've never seen one like that. There are plenty of the common blue ones on our local reservoir. They're very pretty, and for some strange reason, if you have a fly line floating on the water, they will settle along its length. When you pick the line up and cast it out again, they come back and settle again. I don't know what the attraction is. Trout don't care for the adults but will take the nymphs in great numbers as they swim up and then hatch. Sorry, not a very interesting aside!!

Nankate, so good to hear that you are beginning to feel better. Long may it continue, and it's so comforting to know that all the Gransnetters are wishing you well. Have a gentle, happy weekend. . and {{hugs}}

Mildred no the window stays poo free. If it rains really heavily we sometimes get some food splashes as we feed the robin these red suet type pellets that they seem to love yet do not seem to attract any other birds.

Thanks NanKate all our little ones do too and the robins seem to know they are safe so the little ones can get with in a foot or so of the window. Our littlest one can be heard yelling ' Bobbin' as he hurtles across the room to watch. We're working on the pronunciation ....and the hurtling !!