If ever I am feeling down, I find it helps so much to go on a brisk walk with my camera or even just my mobile phone. It is amazing what interesting images can be captured just on a mobile phone camera.
When I was little my dad, who was a real old countryman at heart, used to tell me the names of the wild flowers and birds and these have remained in my memory now I am old too.
He showed me that you can nibble new buds of hawthorn called Bread and cheese or squeeze the milky white kernels out of young barley to eat if you are hungry.
Dad called the seed heads in this photo Goats beard. He showed me wild flowers called, Birds eye, a bright sky blue, Eggs and bacon in yellow and rasher red and even Stinking nanny, an onion smelling tall white flower with lacy leaves!! It's kinder name is Jack by the hedge.
I want to say thanks to my dad for giving me a love of nature, it is a gift which is priceless. If you can help your child or grand child to have this, you will help to give them the capacity for happiness.
He is long gone, along with my mother too, who was a wonderful story teller. She could keep my sister and me entertained through what for little children is the tedious process of being washed and dressed, when we were tiny girls, with endless fairy stories and folk tales. I can still hear the endless songs she sang to me to help me go to sleep in light summer evenings with the smell of cut grass drifting through the open skylight and my dad tending his beloved flower garden below.
My heart goes out to all who are sad and lonely during this pandemic.
Let nature lift your spirits.
Kim