Nature notes

contact with nature is supposed to be good for your wellbeing - and so am feeling in extremely mellow mood after some very high grade contacts.

First news to report is that the blackbirds nesting on the light outside my mother's utility room have successfully reared two offspring (to add to the one in the honeysuckle earlier in the year). Our main contribution was to avoid accidental incineration of the aforesaid nest by turning the light on. But who needs Springwatch when you can have a birds' eye view from the comfort of your own ironing board.

Second news is of my first almost downland stroll of the year.... up to the entrance of Kingley Vale nature reserve; wheat rippling in the wind; swallows diving around; a few poppies in the last remaining bit of set-aside land.

Third is that my salad is doing well on my roof terrace - and today my tomato plants planted last week have produced their first flowers. So the delights of home production and food inches is soon to be mine again.

So all very pleasing and good for my contentment levels. So a bit of a disappointment to read a long report for the Health England group that I am on which is supposed to be looking at health and wellbeing - and yet again for a body sponsored by department of health cannot look at any measures that might improve health and wellbeing that take place outside a doctor's surgery.