Wordless Wednesday: DAY 25 WATER #blurtselfcareathon

25 April 2018 – DAY 25 WATER #blurtselfcareathon Flinders, Mornington Peninsula, Australia

I’m happiest by the water whether it’s rivers, lakes, the sea. All my Australian family love the sea too.

This is Flinders, a village on the Bass Straight side of the Mornington Peninsula where they live some of the time. It’s peaceful and beautiful at Flinders. #rechargethebatteries.

We are so excited to see our Aussie family in Melbourne next month.

April #BlurtSelfCareathon from Blurt Foundation – Join in?

Nourishing yourself in a way that helps you blossom in the direction you want to go is attainable, and you are worth the effort.
– Deborah Day, Author Be Happy Now

I’m really looking forward to joining with The Blurt Foundation #blurtselfcareathon in April. I really enjoyed doing #blurtmerrycalmness it’s helped my #mindfulness practice, helped my #wellbeing and finding words and photos to represent each word.

It will mostly run on Instagram, but I thought I’d do some over view posts here too.

I’ve got lots of ideas of what pictures to take and what I want to write about to fit with the daily theme. I find that having a concept to think about each day, makes me think more mindfully. I do know that taking photos, being outside and being in the moment helps me enormously with my anxiety and living with chronic pain from arthritis

Background

I’ve done a couple of these photo prompts before:

• December 2017 – #blurtmerrycalmness
• January 2018 – #savouringJanuary – @gabrielletreanor – Gabrielle writes about wellbeing, slowing down and self care, being in the moment, mindfulness advice for overthinkers (like me). I really enjoyed this photo prompt too but I’ll write about this another time.

Want to get involved with #blurtselfcareathon?

I’ve been discussing the #blurtselfcareathon on a peer support group on Facebook and some people were a bit stuck about what photos to take and what to write about.
So I thought I’d write a post showing some of my photos for the December prompts. I hope you find it helpful.

My advice

1. You don’t need to post every day – there’s no pressure with this.
2. If you want to keep things more private there are closed facebook pages – or just email yourself
3. It’s your selfcare – do it your way 🙂
4. It’s can be a good idea to look back to see what you wrote – and see how far you’ve come.
5. in some ways these photos prompts are a bit like a diary/journal
6. For me taking photos are part of my self care but they don’t need to look ‘instagramable’ or ‘touched up’. It really doesn’t matter what photo you use to represent your ideas.
7. have fun with it 🙂
8. go at your pace – catch up or skip days if you want to.
9. Have a look around the hashtag

Here’s the prompts for December 2017 – #blurtmerrycalmness

Wordless Wednesday – universal truths be kind… Be by the sea

1 November 2017 – these are universal truths… Time by the sea heals 

#365daysofselfcare 

Lilac, pincushions, tulips and recycled glass – In a Vase on Monday

I managed to dodge the torrential rain to get my contribution to ‘In a Vase on Monday’ – late as usual but I’ve got a very good excuse.  I picked lilac from a dwarf tree my mum gave me last year, an anemone, the last  purple tulip, some Scabiosa (often called pincushion plants), and  the greenery is from a white potentilla which hasn’t started flowering yet.

In a vase on Monday – 18 May 2015

The vase is actually a tea light holder made from recycled glass with a little metal hook.   I bought it at the Eden project a couple of weeks ago – as you can imagine they use a lot of recycled materials and there are some really lovely things on their website shop.  I liked the colour combination of shades of purple/lilac and a bright green.

Do have a look to see what other people have picked over at Cathy’s blog – Rambling in the Garden

She’s got a rainbow of colours and ribbons this week – it really cheered me up – Thank you Cathy.

The lilac bush smells wonderful – it’s sitting next to my bistro table at the bottom of my garden – not that we’ve had much time to sit outside as it’s been very wet and windy.

dwarf lilac bush – May 2015

I haven’t been around much recently on the blog or in Manchester – we were in Cornwall ‘on holiday’ for a week which definitely wasn’t enough time.  I fellt like I’d just skimmed the surface of Cornwall. We are already planning our next visit, probably in September.

Since I’ve been back home, I’ve been horrendously busy. Big life issues have got in the way to say the least – a very old, close friend of mine died very suddenly at the end of April; pals from University and I organised his funeral last week. We are all in a state of shock.

So we had a lovely, but very weird holiday to Cornwall, we were staying in beautiful cottage Charlestown with a view of the sea from the windows. Charlestown is an 18th century port (with its own tall ship) on the edge of St Austell with a couple of restaurants, pubs and a lot of craft/art shops. Good walks along the cliffs locally too.   I’ll write in more detail about our holiday another time.

Life Guard Hut – St Ives – May 2015

We visited:

• The Lost Gardens of Heligan
  I have wanted to go to Heligan for a very long time. The rhododendrons were  out near the house; they were stunning and over 60 foot high; there is just so much to see there all year round.
• The Eden Project This was our 2nd time – we visited September 2014 – this time the aerial walkway in the tropical dome was open and the view was stunning.
• Caerhays Castle
  it has the national collection of magnolias but we went to see the camellias, rhodenendron and azaleas – There are miles of forest walks and we saw four people all day.
• St Ives – wonderful place the sea was turquoise and the sand was white – it was very, very windy the day we went though.  My Chap finally got to go inside the Tate Gallery – he was very happy.
• Looe – the sea was out, so not a lot of fishing boat activity, but there were some great fishmongers.
• Polperro – the archetypical 18/19th century Cornish fishing village but it seemed to be full of holiday cottages and v shabby.

And alot of walks along the sea and cliffs – throwing stones in the sea and listening to Ludovico Einaudi.
If you’re local – do to Caerhays and Heligan before the rhododendrons  and azaelas  go over. You won’t regret it.

There are many wonderful gardens in Cornwall – have a look at the Great Gardens of Cornwall

*****

It has been the hardest and weirdest few weeks of my life but I know I’ll get through this difficult time.

They say it’s better to bury your sadness … In a garden that waits for the Spring to wake from its sleep and burst into green.   Conor oberst – musician – www.conoroberst.com/

I’ll do this though my sadness is very deep – I know gardening will help me.   The Great Gardens of Cornwall helped to replenish my soul and my Chap, my friends, my garden, the hills and the sea will do the rest.  That and the RHS Chelsea flower show on TV.

*****

Have a wonderful week everyone – Carpe Diem

Love Bec xxx