Happy Easter and a reminder to be outside

I think of Easter as a time to celebrate the marvels of the earth through this season of rebirth, regrowth and the nature’s burgeoning vitality. When days of longer light can make my own sap rise along with that of the trees and plants as I suddenly feel more energised!

What better time than this to commit to more time outside, experiencing and learning about our essential connection to the earth first hand. Learn along with the kids how all species are connected to the lives of others and imperative for the longevity of the planet, for our own health and well being and that of our children.

Article here suggests children need at least two hours a day outside.

And this one goes into more detail about the benefits to both physical, mental and spiritual health and its impact on our immune systems.

So what better time to take a serious look at increasing your outdoor time than Spring, when it is so pretty and inviting and downright dramatic with its April showers!

The perfect time to educate for increased understanding of the planet, how to live upon it with more respect and less impact. The more the children know, the more their respect will grow.

Go out to witness and experience:

• Birds – with bits in their mouths, either for nest building or for baby feeding, or singing their Springtime songs, migrants that have recently arrived
• Emerging insects – from creepy crawlies in the crevices to the first bee or butterfly you’ve seen this year
• Rain – appreciating the fact that it is essential for survival. How often do you consider that? And consider also ways in which you can economise with your water usage – waste less of this essential resource. In fact, there’s lots of varying weather to experience during Spring
• Young – the best time for seeing newborns, especially lambs. There may be a farm or a centre nearby you can visit, a river for ducklings, or listen out for baby bird cheeps in roofs, trees and hedges
• Plants, shrubs and trees that are beginning to leaf up or bloom. If you have a garden get the kids involved in growing things, in pots if you don’t, in order to learn about the vital elements needed in order to grow; nourishment, light, water – which we need too! Along with health giving contact with soil!

You may live in a concrete environment, but that is all the more reason you need to teach the children about the earth that lies underneath and to find ways to get them back in contact with it. Otherwise how will they know it’s there, grows our food, supports our lives, and that it needs our attention? Use the occasion to celebrate this earth and the abundance of life bursting around us, on which all ultimately depend, however city central we live.

Have a Happy Easter and springtime!

Spring amid the concrete

Advertisement

My pre-Christmas plea

Is it not all too over-the-top?

I love Christmas.

It means the family are together again.

There’ll be love, warmth, cameraderie, jokes, fun, probably a few irritations and a little bit of power struggling in the kitchen no doubt! Soon resolved as the tensions of being together again after living independent lives slip away and bonds refresh and regroup.

But I also can’t help cringing every year at the prospect of the burden the earth has to bear as a consequence of our festivities.

When I start a bit of shopping – and compared to most it is only a bit, I get immensely anxious at the quantities of packaging, plastic, lights and useless tat I see in vulgar quantities for people to buy, and the equally vulgar attitudes with which people disregard the consequence of doing so.

I don’t want to be a humbug here. I also like to wrap, decorate and buy. But each year the consumerism seems more over-the-top than the year before and I have a very real sense of the earth groaning under the strain of it.

So this is a plea. Can you think about that and practise moderation as you buy trimmings and wrappings and disposables?

Please, please, please create Christmas traditions in your family that incorporate habits which consider the earth as much as the people on it.

Make love of the earth an important part of your Christmas preperations!

Random….. helping the planet but sadly not the rats!

Thought I’d use this picture for my random weekend post: I’m trying to help the planet by putting the dog’s veterinary collar to reuse. But I’m afraid the rats will be losing out as I’ve erected it to stop them shinning up the bird table and nabbing all the birds’ food!  Good idea? What d’you reckon?

(Funny blurry picture from the window  – I never clean them!)