A bit of fresh air....

Gardening together with walking in nature can have many healthbenefits. Its not all hard work. The temptation when the sun disappears for autumn and summer is to go and hide in our houses. In a recent well-being programme the idea of exercise got reframed in my mind. Its not just going jogging, hiking, swimming and running. The moderate forms of exercise can be found in gardening, housework and walking. I would argue that for many they would be ideal ways of getting some fresh air, a connection with the earth, time spent together in contemplation and reality of nature and life. Spend more time with plants and people and you can see real impacts of lack of the right growth conditions and find solutions. Spending time walking around the countryside can give you a better feel of seasons, a different perspective of the 9 to 5 time clock we all seem to have accepted in our lives. Our bodyrhytms have a natural connection with earth rhytms and we cannot forever fight against them.
Today we spent 1 hour in the garden, clearing the ground, planting daffodils and tulips. Planting bulbs in autumn and sewing flowering plants at this time of the year gives me hope that although the gardening season seems to come to and end, we can plan for the spring when small shoots will come up giving us hope that the summer days are ahead.
I also spent time organising and categorising our dried seeds and putting them away until next year. We identified a flowering fuschia plant that we would like to see in the garden and talked together about how we could create a nicer environment.
This was followed by a soup lunch where we looked at the achievements of not only today but our life together so far. This too is a bringing in of the harvest, acknowledging the growing we have done together and where we can go from here......