Slow and as mindful as a turtle

Although I am back to work, it is at a very slow pace. I really don't know how I used to fit everything into my day! I have rationalised my new pace to some blogs that I started looking at whilst I was recovering from my operation.  I have known about the slow movement and mindful living for years now, but really haven't had enough time to to put those practices into place. Ah the irony!

“Mindfulness is a certain way of paying attention that is healing, that is restorative, that is reminding you of who you actually are so that you don’t wind up getting entrained into being a human doing rather than a human being.”


So now I am concentrating about being rather than doing. In truth , this is a pretty boring post unless you are interested in swamp critters, but one of the reasons that I started this blog was to document my life...however, mundane.

It has rained  every day this year in our neck of the woods. When the sun broke through for about half an hour I took a little walk down to our dam. I look at our dam, every day, but it has been about a year since I have actually sat down and experienced it...and it it only 20 metres from our front door. So here are some pics of what I see everyday from my window.

I have seen up to 20 turtles, on this log...often stacked on top of each other. (Is that turtle sex? If so they must have orgies!) The water looks muddy because of all of the rain.

Today the ducks came along and pushed the turtles off!

When we first bought our property, the dam was covered in water lilies. It was like Monet's garden. I even envisioned a pretty bridge spanning the water.  Subsequent flooding has moved them to the neighbouring dam. We do have a couple left though. As I sat to take the pic I realised there were hundreds of dragonflies whirring around me. It was actually quite noisy. It reminded me of the scene in Harry Potter where he had to get the key from the insects (birds?). I thought they would hit me, but they didn't. I tried to take some arty shots, but they were really quick! Look closely and you can see the shadows of their wings. Pretty darn amazing.

This Darter has been living on this branch for about a year now. When it swims in the water, its body is submerged, and its exposed neck looks like a snake. It scared the living daylights out of me until I realised it was a bird. I thought the dam was infested with snakes!