by Judith Stafford | Mar 18, 2020 | Into the Woods
Into the Woods March 2020 This has been a strange month. With Corvid-19 arriving in the UK and us going from a bit of extra vigilance to total lockdown. Nature doesn’t care about that though and March is the time that plants and trees really start to bloom. Spring flowers such as daffodils, celandines and primroses are all out now, it is very much the yellow season. So I have been out for my sanity walk, as I call it, keeping local and realising how lucky I am to live somewhere so green and beautiful. The blackthorn is now in blossom, it is the first of our trees to burst into flower. Its flowers looks like tiny white stars against the bark and thorns. It always reminds me that spring is now here. I went on my second foraging course this year too, at the start of the month. Don’t know when the next one will be, but I really enjoyed it despite the rain. It rained from start to finish, clearing up nicely for the afternoon! Even though it was only a few weeks after the first foraging the plants were very different. Cow slips, another striking yellow flower, were blooming. These plants have been used to make wine in the past but now it is illegal to pick them. Which is good as they brighten up bare bits of ground. We also found common sorrel which is one of my favourite plants to eat. The leaves have a fresh citrus flavour. I love it so much I bought a packet of seeds to grow it at home....
by Judith Stafford | Mar 9, 2020 | Uncategorised
Sleep – I can’t get no sleep! or Trying to come off sleeping tablets and get to sleep naturally It may officially be spring (somewhere) but it still seems like winter to me until at least the clocks go back. It is dark and dreary, and I am thinking about hibernation and sleep. This is not a coincidence. I am coming off sleeping tablets that I have been on for more years than I would like to remember. I went on them after a burglary which set of memories of being burgled a few years before 3 times in 5 weeks. I left that house but as I had bought this house that wasn’t possible. So I ended up at the doctors on sleeping pills. They were great. For the first time in my life I had no problem sleeping. I had always had a problem getting off to sleep. Not so much staying asleep but falling asleep in the first place. Sleeping tablets seemed like the answer. I knew they were addictive, but I had managed to cut down my dose by half so what was the problem? Every time I went to the doctors they told me I should come off the pills. They didn’t offer any real advice about how to do this apart from to stop taking them and suggesting an NHS leaflet. Not very helpful, especially as I had read so many books and articles about sleep, so after a couple of attempts that left me with nights of no sleep at all I gave up. But the last time I went the...
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