How are you Getting Your Fix?

Starling

The first smattering of rain is falling, staining the grey garden cushions with dark leopard print patterns. I stay, enjoying the sound and smell of the rain. The resident starling colony, numbers swollen by a successful breeding season, are making a cacophonous sound on the roof of my house, chattering, whistling and clicking at great speed and volume. With a whoosh, they take off, moving as one, briefly darkening the sky as they zoom overhead, then swerve left across the gardens, out of sight.

This is how I’ve been getting my nature fix this month. Early in the morning, before it gets too hot, I sit out here with a cup of tea and see what’s happening. I study a ladybird crawling along the edge of a nasturtium leaf, or a spider casting silk to construct a web. I watch the soft early morning light glowing through leaves. I try to notice the incremental shift from flower to seed. Admittedly, I also hear neighbours arguing, TV and radio blaring through open windows, builders shouting to each other as they unload and set up power tools.

Poppy seed heads in a garden with green plants and flowers

During busy days and weeks that get swallowed up by work, this is what keeps me connected to what matters. I escape my laptop, hungry to suck me into a rectangular vortex of demands and I see how everyone is getting on out here. All the battles fought and won every day in the living breathing world.  All the beginnings and endings that otherwise, go unnoticed.

This is the nature connection that is available to me at the moment and I savour it.

How are you getting your Nature Fix this month?