Tagged: wonderfulworld

03
Apr
2021

A WEEKEND OF MENTAL HEALTH BOOSTERS

I read recently that birdwatching from your home provides a major boost to mental health. The article says, “Researchers from the University of Exeter recently found that bird watching can have a positive effect on mental health. They discovered that people who are able to watch birds from their homes have a lower risk of depression, stress, and anxiety compared to people who live in less nature dense areas with fewer birds.” We have two bird feeders set up at the corner of the deck, one that holds 2 suet balls and one that is 2-sided for sunflower seeds and...

14
Feb
2021

NINE INCH NAILS

Okay, not really, but we had low fog this morning and then the sun came out and lit up the hoarfrost on everything. And who can resist going out and tromping around in the snow that has stayed on the ground due to our sub-zero temperatures for three weeks and taking photos of everything in sight? Not me!

06
Feb
2021

MINUTIAE

The thing about trying to be better and more frequent about posting here is that I feel obligated to have something to say. Content. A subject. And when you aren’t going anywhere or doing anything, it’s hard to fill up a post with content. Nothing happening equals nothing to write about. Of course, that’s not really true. I AM doing things, but they’re repetitive and boring, mostly. I AM going somewhere, but it’s just the grocery store. But I’m obviously no Emily Dickinson, holed up in my house, thinking deep thoughts and translating them into poetry on scraps of paper....

02
Feb
2021

WALKING ON ICE, WALKING IN SUNSHINE

Unprecendented amounts of sunshine so far this week, and I’m loving it. But it’s cold…brrrr, is it cold. So cold that when I went to scrape the ice off the car windows, I discovered most of it was on the INSIDE. So cold that I am able to let out my inner dragon, blowing iced breath and roaring under it. Here in Flyinge, the cold stays close to the ground. The snow we had weeks ago, enough to cover the yards and streets and the tops of the hedges, is still there, albeit eroded at the edges. On the streets,...

09
Feb
2020

TIME OF THE SEASON

I refilled the bird feeder with seed and the suet ball holder today and was instantly gratified to see both of them immediately crowded with sparrows and songbirds the moment I went inside. It’s very satisfying to think I’m helping the birds in some small way and that they find their way to our feeders at all. I want to plant butterfly bushes this year, too, to try and put some part of our yard to use for butterflies and hopefully, bees. Most of our large yard is just grass, which isn’t doing anything useful and since we’re rarely out...

04
Jun
2019

PRACTICALLY PERFECT IN EVERY WAY

On Saturday, I’m flying to a place I’ve always wanted to visit but actually kinda never thought I’d make it to. I’m past 50 so you know the list of places I’d like to see is getting more and more improbable. I’m not sure why I’ve always thought it would be cool to visit Seattle. It’s a big city and it has what seems to be a cool vibe, and it’s on the west coast in the Pacific Northwest, which I’m partial too after visiting my best friend in Oregon a couple of times, but other than that, I just...

01
May
2019

IT’S THE LITTLE THINGS

Just now, under the bird feeder, pecking up dropped sunflower seeds: a big, well-fed ring-necked pheasant strutting and bobbing his head, and a tiny-in-comparison golden-beige Eurasian collared dove. I had to look up the dove as I wasn’t sure exactly which breed it was; we don’t see them very often. We get pheasants almost daily, both the big male and a full harem of smaller, browner females that scuttle over to sweep up seeds and then dart back to the safety of the hedge. I’ve only got sunflower seeds left and not that many of them; the season for feeding...

22
Apr
2019

I’LL TAKE IT ALL

A blog friend of mine posted this poem on Instagram last night and it struck me hard…it’s nearly exactly how I feel about spring and the coming of the green, even if the winter treated me well, or at least, not badly. Instructions on Not Giving Up by Ada Limón More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate sky of spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees that really gets to me. When all the shock of white...

20
Apr
2019

SPRINGY WEEKEND WITH EXTRA TISSUES

If I did internet quizzes, which I don’t and neither should you, the one I would be providing right now, for your pleasure and edification, is “Which one of the Seven Dwarves is Liz?” Hint: I do not have a medical degree, and while I DO like to sleep in, Sleepy is not the correct answer either. I thought, after the interminable 3 weeks in March where I would have preferred to actually remove my eyeballs from my head rather than endure one more minute of unbearable itching, that I was done, HA HA HA, with allergy symptoms for the...

16
Apr
2019

TELL ME WHY

It’s partly because I work on the computer all day long at work 5 days a week and my shoulders hurt by the end of each day and the last thing I want to do when I get home is sit at a computer again, even just to post. It’s partly because I’m often convinced that I have nothing interesting to say or write about, and some things that ARE interesting aren’t things I CAN write about. It’s partly because I get busy with other things, like meal preparation and consumption, like house cleaning and chores and things that must...

May 2024
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