And now Autumn has arrived

It has gone much colder this last week and looking through my window into the garden I can see that the hawthorn hedge is slowly turning brown. The leaves on the plum tree are falling quickly to the ground and some of the plants are also dropping their leaves. The blackbirds and starlings are no longer to be seen and the many birds on the feeders include sparrows and goldfinches and there are rather a lot of them! One of the uneaten sunflower hearts has grown into a sunflower despite the foraging pigeons.

There are still butterflies and dragonflies around though. My son and I went out on his weekly visit to Naturescape a wildlife plant centre. Walking over the fields and into the woods we found an area of sunshine and away from the strong wind. There in the hedge were several butterflies, speckled wood ones mainly but there was a rather battered comma butterfly. There were quite a lot of darter dragonflies both male and females and as we walked back to the car we saw on another sunny hedge a beautiful southern hawker dragonfly and near by was a migrant hawker dragonfly. Dragonflies are amazing with their colours and so beautiful to see. It was quite an uplifting visit.

Back home I have been going through old craft magazines and looking to see what I can make. I have lots of small pieces of fabric so can make patchwork items. But this is all for the future. This week I have spent time with adult colouring books. I love some of these and although I have been told they are not art I know that a knowledge of colour is good for this particular hobby. I find that the time passes quickly when I am absorbed with the colouring, deciding which colours to use and where. Often you don’t see the pattern until you start to pout in the colours. I have also been reading on my Kindle as well as exploring a new set of oracle cards.

I am trying to do a bit of planning for the winter months when I am unable to go out but I am finding that quite hard as my motivation is not yet back to normal. But I am getting there slowly. I hope there will be more visits to parks and nature reserves before the weather gets too cold.

One thing after another

Why does everything happen at the same time? Or as is happening now, it is one thing after another. Little minor health things and other little things to do with everyday living are building up one after the other. It seems that there is never a gap between each thing that happens and they just follow one another before you have fully recovered from the first one.  And somehow I have to fit in the everyday chores of living, cleaning, washing and cooking, etc. But this is a sign of our chaotic world I suppose. Even the weather is chaotic and not normal for the time of the year.

So how do we cope with this kind of thing? Going with the flow was always something I advocated but now even the flow is turbulent so I am not sure I want to just go with it. What I decided to do in the end was to sit back for a few moments and think of ways of calming or taking my mind off what was going on. Music is good for me and I love to listen to it all day. I have my favourite music as well, some of which can be very inspiring but is not necessarily the right kind of music to calm me down.

Again I like to read but some fiction can be relaxing while other fiction can be just the opposite and have you wondering what is going to happen next in the story. I have started painting again which I do find relaxing and takes my mind off other things too but inspiring music is good for this. I love the soaring music of Rachmaninov but I also love the soul searching music of Shostakovich as well. But neither of these are really calming although they do make me feel better.

Just sitting by the window and looking out on the garden is calming. I can watch the birds and butterflies which are still around and relax for a while. The simplest way to relax or calm down is to do some breathing exercises, taking deep breaths to slow everything down. You only need a couple of minutes and you can feel much calmer then.

I wonder how long this chaos will continue. Everything I read about it states that all will be well in the end and that all the hidden corruption and badness in the world will come to the surface to be healed and then we will learn to be who we are meant to be, compassionate, respectful, loving towards each other and helping each other to live a joyful and peaceful life. I hope I’m still around when this happens!