GARDENING

Welcoming to Your Bees Outdoor Space

By Whitney Price

Even small children are aware that bees have the potential to sting humans. Thus, on first seeing the title of this article, you'd be forgiven for wondering why someone would wish to attract bees to their garden. Bees, like many other creatures, are often unfairly maligned.

While it is true that bees can sting, they will only do so if they perceive their lives to be in danger. Once a bee stings a human, it will die. In truth, bees are gorgeous, fuzzy endearing little creatures. They are charming and attractive to look at. Bees are not just aesthetically appealing. They do the world at large a great service. If it were not for the humble bee, the food you eat every day may well become a great deal more expensive.

Bees are pollinators, and they do this job for free as they fly from one flower to the next. This means that bees fertilize crops. Without them, farmers would have to pollinate crops manually. This would cost billions of dollars every year.

Bee Survival

Fortunately, it doesn't take a great deal of effort to attract bees to your garden. It's something that anybody can do if they so wish. It all starts by considering what bees need in order to survive and thrive. Fundamentally, bees require what all other creatures need to ensure their survival. They can and will thrive if they have adequate food, shelter, and water. You can easily supply bees with all three of these things in your own garden or outdoor space.

Flowering Plants

Bees rely on flowering plants for all of the food they eat. Every day of its life, the worker bee will make its mission to gather food. This food is nectar and pollen.

There are some flowers that bees prefer over others when it comes to the nectar and pollen they consume. To fill your outdoor space with culinary delights for bees, simply choose from an assortment of trees, shrubs, flowers and herbs that they are known to enjoy.

Bees are partial to nectar and pollen produced by apple trees, hawthorn, ivy, honeysuckle, abelia, pussy willow, mahonia, crocus, snowdrop, sedum, lungwort, phacelia, perennial wallflowers, moderna, winter aconite, rosemary, chives, sage and marjoram. Planting some of these in your garden will ensure that they have food to eat.

Bee Shelter

You can very easily provide bees with adequate shelter in your garden, too. There are many ways of supplying bees with a nest to shelter in. You will find many tips and ideas about this on the Internet. You can choose whichever suits you and your means.

Do you have a drill in the family toolbox? Is there an old chunk of wood lying around somewhere? Supplying bees with a home can be as simple as using a drill to bore holes in an old piece of wood in order to provide a quick and easy nest for them.

You can also put any plastic water or soda bottles you may have amassed to good ecological use by using them to build a nest for bees. To do this, begin by cutting the tops off the bottles. Next, arrange the bottles together in a wooden or metal, four-sided rectangle or square structure. A large box without a top will suffice. The end with the top cut off should be facing outwards. Finally, fill the bottles with lengths of old pieces of grass, pieces of twig and hollow flower stems.

If you can't be bothered with the rigmarole of constructing your own bees nest using plastic bottles, you can still provide a nest for bees if you have a little extra cash with which to do so.

You can buy a ready-made nest for bees from many online outlets. You also have the option of buying a bees nest from many brick and mortar stores. Simply peruse what is available and choose a product you like.

Bee Hydration

Bees also require water, so do not forget to ensure that you provide them with a source. To provide bees with water, simply leave a large plastic vessel in your garden close to their nest. Over time the vessel will fill with rainwater providing the bees with the hydration they need to survive. Now Enjoy

Hopefully, you now understand how easy it is to create a bee-friendly garden, and why it's such a positive thing to do. This move will benefit you and your family directly, too. It means you can look forward to tending and enjoying your bee-friendly outdoor space during the clement weather months every year. Spending time outdoors enjoying nature is always wonderful.

Why Mindfulness MATTERS

By Caitlyn McKey

Hello fellow fast-paced life goer! How’s that super speedy life going for you right now? Experiencing a bit of burnout? Feeling a little stressed?

How about that brain fog? Do you actually know where your keys are?

Don’t worry my friend, you’re not alone. These are all side effects of the fast-paced modern life we’re all experiencing these days. As a professional using daily mindfulness-based art practices, I’m here to share with you a few small mindfulness practices that you can easily incorporate into your day-today, and the benefits that slowing down more regularly can have in your life. So, what exactly is mindfulness? Jon

Kabat-Zinn, an American professor and author of "Mindful," defines it as “the awareness that arises through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally, through the service of self-understanding, and wisdom.” Have you ever been reading a book, and in the middle of a sentence remember you need to go grocery shopping? Or maybe you need to take care of the laundry? But then you take mental note of that thought and then go right back to reading. The action of being distracted and then pulling your attention back to the original intentional action, in this case reading, is in its purest form mindfulness. Mindfulness is different from meditation in that it is more of an umbrella term under which meditation fits. What’s great about mindfulness is that you can get the same benefits from a daily meditation practice, but in a shorter amount of time.

SOME SIMPLE MINDFULNESS PRACTICES INCLUDE:

• breathing practices where you do a repeated cycle of breaths, focusing intentionally on the breath itself • mindful eating where you pay full attention with all five senses to the food you’re consuming • mindful walks where similarly to mindful eating you’re again using all five senses while going for a walk for anywhere from 1 minute to an hour in length

Difficult feelings, emotions, and pain are all factors of a human life, however, daily mindfulness practices show that these do not have to rule the ways in which we exist. Studies have shown that a daily mindfulness practice can lower stress, increase our overall sense of calm, increase social emotional skills by deepening our uses of empathy and compassion, aid in managing difficult feelings, reduce brain fog and brain chatter and increase our overall physical health.

If you would like to learn more about the benefits of mindfulness, different mindfulness practices to incorporate into your day, or even more specifically mindfulness-based art practices be sure to check out my website deflatewithcait.com, or you can follow me on Instagram and Facebook @deflatewithcait, where I showcase my program weaving together mindfulness and arts-based practices to highlight the inherent mindful properties of art making.