Appreciation Week 2 - The natural world around us

Appreciation August

Welcome to week 2 of my appreciation series where this week we’ll be focusing on how we can appreciate the natural world around us.

Be honest, when was the last time you went for a walk without your phone and really stopped to appreciate the beauty around you? Don’t give me the excuse of ‘well, I always take my phone in case anyone needs to get hold of me’. No, they don’t. The world can cope perfectly well whilst you’re ‘off-line’ for 10 minutes and taking time out for yourself.

It’s due to this very reason, of thinking that we’re indispensable and need to be available 24/7, that we’ve actually forgotten how to appreciate what’s around us and the natural beauty of our very own doorstop.

Here’s a few ideas to get you started on the walk to appreciation:

STOP!! What do you see, hear, smell? Feel the texture of leaves and bark on the trees, listen to the birds singing, cows mooing, sheep baaing, smell the fresh cut hay (or maybe farmyard smells!). Remember when you were a child running through the leaves, kicking the stones and jumping on twigs? I still love running through crisp autumn leaves and hearing their crunch beneath my feet.

Appreciate the things that maybe you wouldn’t normally think about. Even if you’re not that keen on spiders, their webs look beautiful when covered with the early morning mist, or what about the wonderful colours and textures of snail shells or the body of armour on a beetle. However, I’d draw the line at stopping to appreciate slugs - they really make me want to barf!!

Look at all the different varieties of plants and flowers. I’m a sucker for ferns, I love their feathery delicate, yet incredibly strong, leaves and the way their new shoots uncurl at the end. I’m also loving the ‘pom pom’ marigolds in Weston Park, Sheffield at the moment. I believe they’re called ‘African Antigua Yellow’.

Grab a blanket, lay in your back garden and look up at the clouds. Watching the clouds drift by is soooo relaxing and I don’t know about you, but there’s been many times when the shape of the clouds have seemed to create faces and animals. The best one I ever saw though was one which looked like a toilet, I kid you not!! Ok, so I’m a little bit weird but hey, who wants to be ‘normal’ anyway :-)

The next time you’re moaning about the rain, stop to look at it with a new appreciation. Water is what gives us life after all so take time out to watch how the rain bounces off the floor or how a single raindrop falls down the window. Or when you’re by the sea or a river, look at how the water moves and how it changes colour in the sunlight.

I consider myself extremely lucky to live where I do, I’m surrounded by lots of countryside and trails and I stop to appreciate what I have on my doorstep every single time I go for a run or walk. All the photos in my blog today are of places minutes from my house. But you can be in the middle of a large city and still appreciate all that nature has to offer. Beautiful flowers grow in the most obscure places and every city has at least one park where you can escape from the hustle and bustle. Now, more than ever before, do we need to appreciate and preserve the natural world around us for future generations to come.

#appreciationaugust