How many tits can a titmouse tit?

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It’s Friday It’s also 60 degrees and sunny outside, and I’m feeling downright giddy (and silly)! This short post to end Connect with Nature week here at Heartspoken simply shares the link to a wonderful piece called An Ode to the Titmouse by my friend and Connection Messenger April Moore. Posted last week on her [...]

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13 great reasons to start a nature journal

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It’s “Connect with Nature” Week at Heartspoken.com. The fourth week of each month this year will focus on ways to strengthen your connection with nature and the natural world around you. Whether you live in the country or in a high rise apartment, there are ways to become more aware and more connected to your [...]

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Stress Reduction Secret Combo: Nature and Paper Pitching

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The following is a guest blog post by Connection Messenger Debbie Bowie, a professional organizer and feng shui practitioner whose lecture and book have helped me completely revamp my home office space from one I hated to enter into one that is warm, inviting, less cluttered, and productive. I’ve written in greater detail HERE about how [...]

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Closing the Circle of Nature

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One glorious summer morning years ago I left my children with their grandparents in a small town in Iowa and went off to my first encounter with virgin tall-grass prairie. Armed with field guides and an indistinct map, I wandered down washboard gravel roads, not sure I’d recognize prairie when I found it. I did [...]

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Save our Forests: One Woman’s Crusade

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  “Forests are the lungs of our Planet!” What an inspiration to learn about one young woman’s efforts to save the forests of our earth. Aparna Mulberry of Santa Fe, New Mexico, is on a mission. You’ll enjoy this short video that she created as an audition for a chance to go to Borneo as [...]

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Connect with your Inner Artist

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Introducing Nature Connection Messenger/Artist: Jackie Catteron Sometimes you come across a work of art that is so full of light and warmth and beauty that you just wish you could meet the artist. That happened to me last year when I bought some beautiful notecards featuring birds and flowers and country scenes that just…well, they [...]

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Weirdly Wonderful Orchid Sex

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Okay, so call me a voyeur, but Mother Nature has really outdone herself in devising clever ways to ensure that her beautiful creations propagate themselves successfully. I was mesmerized listening to NPR’s Science Friday yesterday as Flora Lichtman regaled listeners with “An Orchid Explosion:” the story of the orchid genus catasetum, about which Charles Darwin [...]

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The Beauty of the Wild…

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Let the beauty of the wild leave footprints on your heart.” Peggy Anderson Sometimes my need for the wild…for touching the natural world…is so overwhelming, I just have to stop and go outside for awhile. I am blessed to live in the Shenandoah Valley, where my ability to do this is just a few steps [...]

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Musical Visions of the Land

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Connection Messengers: Matthew Lyon and Christine Dickinson… “Earthpassage” My friend Mimi Meredith sent me a beautiful gift last winter to thank me for being part of her blog community. It was a wonderful CD called “Quiet Paths: Journeys Through the Forest,” by Matthew Lyon and Christine Dickinson. As soon as I heard it, I was [...]

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When did you awaken to Nature?

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Nature Connection Messenger April Moore had a beautiful post on her blog today called “Awakening to Nature.” In it, she looks back to try to identify when it was that she caught the spark of her now-passionate love for Nature, and it got me thinking about my own long relationship with Nature. I was one [...]

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Beauty and Tragedy in the Ocean Depths

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8fUZdsSEOQ”

Yesterday was World Oceans Day. Right when environmentalists are struggling for a handhold, and making progress in some areas, the Deepwater Horizon Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is threatening the lives of millions of ocean creatures, the livelihood of thousands of fisherman and Gulf Coast tourism enterprises, and thousands of square miles of fragile [...]

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Connect with Earth to nourish your soul

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Introducing Earth Connection Messenger: April Moore Some of the most powerful Connection Messengers in my life have been those people who see the same things I see every day but who can, through their words, their music, or their art, help me see them in a wonderful new way that forever changes my appreciation for [...]

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Discover the Forest

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It’s so important that we teach our children and grandchildren about the fascinating natural world around them. Many of my posts will lead you to great information on how to do this. Here’s one I found recently Discover The Forest (http://www.discovertheforest.org/) Many of you are probably familiar with Last Child in the Woods by Richard [...]

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Did you see that?

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Pay attention: Nature’s putting on a free show. Too often I forget to pay attention, but not today. We live in a lovely old farmhouse on about 20 acres on the North Fork of the Shenandoah River. It’s about 200 yards from my kitchen door to where we park our car, and as I step [...]

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