Reg and I have been out and about around the Goulburn Valley in Sepparton region this week and next week we will be heading over toward, Bendigo, Victoria.
We both love beeing close to nature, where we live and explore. We thrive on this Eco-therapy lifestyle.

Ecotherapy is not a fad, nor a new marketing approach for the psychology profession, and not just more “green exercise,” although it does include fitness and wellness practices.  I try to do my exercises as much as posible in nature, bushwalking is our great love. Even when we relax at home, we love to have a window view, unbroken, looking out over nature. The tranquility this brings Rus is the eco-therapy I speak of.

Some examples of recent ecotherapy research findings:
- “Equine Therapy Helps Withdrawn Vets Reconnect”
- “71% Report Depression Decrease After Green Walk”
- “Immersion in Nature Makes Us Nicer”
- “How the City Hurts Your Brain...and What You Can Do About It”
- “Connection to Nature Vital to Our Mental and Physical Health, Scientists Say”
- “Drug Addiction: Environmental Conditions Play Major Role In Effective Treatment And Preventing Relapses, Animal Study Shows”

This post is illustrated with a poster that is being made, using the art of Kathy Shell and the poem, An Irish Blessing. This may be ordered direct from the artist, through the contact pages of this web site.

I loved using my new IXUS cameraJ. Australian white Ibis, ducks and Indigo meeting a friend on our walk yesterday, taken with new camera, using the x5 zoom lense. 

The swans and ducks were easy to photograph, they swim up to me, hoping for a free feed. I want to to include more walks into my schedule, to take advantage of the 170 hectare of wetlands with rivergum forests near our summer home in Mooroopna. This excellent web site shows the location of many of the bushland reserves, in northern Victoria and the southern Riverina http://users.mcmedia.com.au/~stocky/parks.html

I have begun to help my eldest daughter by cleaning her house three times a week, as she works full time, has two young children and does volunteer work as well. As the saying goes, lol, ‘If you want something done, ask a busy person’.

I plan to do more of my painting art work now my new camera can help me achieve better bird and wildlife images to add to my on location painted, landscape art works. I plan to work on these wildlife and bird portrait paintings from my photos in the evening.

I am adjusting my time schedule so I can fit in more of some things, (walking, housework and art) and I need to become a lot more efficient in my time use for writing, to enable me to more of the other things,.

So I am devising strict times for me to work within, to help me fit in what I want and need to do.  The adjustments I need to make are:- I need to begin my mornings earlier, start writing by 8am and write more efficiently as I will not be writing at night, if I am to allow, more time to my passion for portrait painting. I need to begin my active afternoon right on the tick of the clock at 12MD, if I am to include another one as well as my own in the housework chores and I will learn to do more of my exercises at home, rather than at gym to find the time to bush walk more often and for longer. 
I have 15 minutes left of my writers must time, then this computer, goes off.

Morning is for My Writer’s Muse’J

Active Afternoons J:--exercise, active chores, gardening, and walks.

PM is for Portrait Painting Passion. J