Our yard doesn't really get sunshine in the evening - but I was sitting at my desk around 5 p.m. and suddenly saw sunlight hitting a clump of poppies. It had more or less moved on by the time I arrived ... but this, nonetheless, is a pretty good example of the sustaining effects of nature ... I've been reading Florence Williams's excellent The Nature Fix, and I'll just steal this quotation from Frederick Law Olmsted from her, writing in 1865 that viewing nature "employs the mind without fatigue and yet exercises it; tranquilizes it and yet enlivens it; and thus, through the influence of the mind over the body, gives the effect of refreshing rest and reinvigoration to the whole system." It seems like he was right - five minutes of this today, and I could go back to (slow) paper writing ...
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