Uplifted by nature and fun!

Wednesday afternoon and the GreenCloud gang met, looking forward to time together and some much needed ‘uplifting’. On check-in there were a mixture of emotions with sadness and pain, and a lot of anxiety, although feeling that whilst difficult it was worthwhile to get on the internet and join in GreenCloud.

Our nature share included some great trees from local beauty spots. Stunning colours in this fabulous photo taken at Lily Hill Park in Bracknell, and a ‘tunnel’ of tress at the edge of a golf course.

And we watched an amazing video of the sunrise over a field at Eton Wick with early morning mist swirling.

Wildlife from local areas also featured – a heron from Datchet, and this naughty squirrel who ‘threw’ an acorn down hitting the head of one of our members! We also enjoyed a beautiful Red Admiral butterfly and four ‘ugly ducklings’ from Vanessa (actually reasonably attractive cygnet!)

But the most adorable animal picture came from a members hamster, Spirit. We watched a video of her using her wheel in a particularly unusual way… Someone needs to tell her she should be inside the wheel exercising rather than just sitting on the edge turning it round and round! Click here to see the video 🙂

We also enjoyed some products of nature. Our normally veg-avoidant member showed us a huge marrow and a pretty squash waiting to be cooked and eaten !

But a picture of this flower drew the most debate. No-one knew what is was – an incredible red and white with a lace effect that someone (Rex!) declared was not a real flower but a hoax. A little detective work has proved him wrong though – this is a Banksia coccinea, commonly known as the scarlet banksia, waratah banksia or Albany banksia, is an erect shrub or small tree in the family Proteaceae (or so says Wikipedia!)

Quick comfort break then onto fun and games! We introduced Candida and Sam to ‘animal 20 questions’ guessing correctly (eventually) a hippopotamus, a penguin and a polar bear. And this lead to the sharing of the ‘useful’ fact that you should never eat the liver of a polar bear: it contains so much vitamin A it would poison you!

We all finished the session feeling better in ourselves. Checkout planticons included daisies (playful and fun); bluebells (comfortable and balanced), oak trees (steady and trustworthy) and cherry blossom (peaceful and mindful).

What we really needed was a planticon to represent ‘Feeling better and mood uplifted’ – another search for appropriate pictures might be on the way!