Find Harmony right at home by creating a wildlife garden - and as you improve your property you will also be improving the look of the park - its a win-win:
How to Create a Certified Wildlife habitat
How to Create a Certified Wildlife habitat
Garden
Everyone needs to eat! Planting native forbs, shrubs and trees is the easiest way to provide the foliage, nectar, pollen, berries, seeds and nuts that many species of wildlife require to survive and thrive. You can also incorporate supplemental feeders and food sources.
Wildlife need clean water sources for many purposes, including drinking, bathing and reproduction. Water sources may include natural features such as ponds, lakes, rivers, springs, oceans and wetlands; or human-made features such as bird baths, puddling areas for butterflies, installed ponds or rain gardens.
Wildlife require places to hide in order to feel safe from people, predators and inclement weather. Use things like native vegetation, shrubs, thickets and brush piles or even dead trees.
Wildlife need a sheltered place to raise their offspring. Many places for cover can double as locations where wildlife can raise young, from wildflower meadows and bushes where many butterflies and moths lay their eggs, or caves where bats roost and form colonies.
How you maintain your garden or landscape can have an important effect on the health of the soil, air, water and habitat for native wildlife--as well as the human community nearby. Reducing chemical use, composting, mulching and reducing turf grass in your yard are important steps to gardening greener.
Once you have provided these essential elements to make a healthy and sustainable wildlife habitat, join the thousands of wildlife enthusiasts across the country who have earned the distinction of being part of NWF's Certified Wildlife Habitat™ program.
You have earned a rest! Now enjoy your new garden to the fullest by learning to meditate there - and who knows, you could find Harmony here as well. (wink)
Nature Meditations
How to Meditate in Nature
These meditations are done outside in natural surroundings. They help to enliven the basic intelligence of nature in our awareness and physiology. Our being resonates with the sight of a flower, sound of birds, feeling of the breeze. These experiences wake something up inside of us, and help to set our lives into a more natural rhythm. Nature lovers have discovered this secret without ever studying meditation!
In the nature meditations, we focus our awareness on the experience of nature — sight, sound, touch, smell (and perhaps even taste). As with every meditation on our website, when the mind wanders from the focus of the meditation, bring it gently back. There are several different ways that this meditation can be done. Experiment and find what works best for you.
BASIC NATURE MEDITATION — EYES CLOSED
Find a comfortable position sitting or lying down. Begin with a few deep breaths, breathing deep into the belly, to help you relax and to bring you to the sensations of the present moment. Now close your eyes and be present to what is being experienced with your eyes closed. Notice how your body feels, as well as the activity of your mind and emotions. Experience whatever is present without resisting anything or trying to change it. Do this for about a minute.
Now bring your awareness to everything that you can experience in your surroundings. Feel the temperature of the air on your skin, the feeling of the breeze and the sun. Notice the sounds around you — birds, bees, crickets, flowing water. Listen to the symphony of nature. For the rest of the meditation, continue to experience these feelings and sounds. Whenever your mind wanders, gently bring it back to the experience of nature.
As you meditate, you can see where your attention is naturally drawn, or purposefully scan for different experiences. You can also focus on one experience and notice the experience in greater detail. If it is a bird’s song — notice the quality of the sound — as if you are going more deeply into the sound. (It may seem to have a shape or texture.) Don’t analyze the sound and label it with your mind — simply notice the quality of it.
Once again, whenever you notice that the mind has become absorbed in thoughts, easily bring it back to the sounds and sensations of being in nature. At times both awareness of the sensations from the environment and thoughts will be present. That’s fine. Just easily favor the experiences of nature.
LISTENING MEDITATION — VARIATION OF BASIC NATURE MEDITATION
Begin as described in the Basic Nature Meditation, but focus on sound only. Let your awareness be with all the sounds in the environment, noticing them in great detail. You can also focus on one particular sound, such as that of flowing water. Continue to bring your attention back to that particular sound when your mind wanders.
NATURE MEDITATION — EYES OPEN
This meditation can be done while sitting, standing or walking. Time spent in nature can always be a form of meditation when we put our full attention on what is around us — the earth, trees, flowers, animals, fresh air, the breeze…
To intensify this experience, allow yourself to experience the sights, sounds and smells without labeling them and becoming mentally involved with them. Notice the tendency of the mind to name and evaluate everything — “Oh, look at that beautiful bird. What kind is it? Is it here all winter or where does it go?” When these kinds of thoughts come up, let them go. Simply experience the colors, shape, sounds, movement of the bird or whatever else you are experiencing. Let it be an experience without meaning and without reference to any other experience.
Experience everything with an open awareness, as if you’d never experienced anything like it before. As always, when the mind wanders and becomes caught up in thought, simply bring it back to the experience of nature.