Foraging and Plogging

Something that I enjoy doing, but don't do enough is going on nature walks. It's not a productive use of time, nor is it that meditative. You don't exercise and you may return with nothing to show for it. Most nature walks I've done have been when there is nothing else to do on a holiday or vacation. But I aspire to make nature walking part of my normal routine. I just need something vaguely productive to channel this past time into to make it happen.

The idea of making fairy houses out of foraged materials has always appealed to me, but my efforts to bring a structure together were pretty rough and difficult to build upon. Then I had a scaled down idea of  making miniature twig chairs for the place cards at my wedding. Since I was already making the favors, everyone thought I was crazy to also make over two hundred little chairs out of twigs and glue. But they were so simple compared to things I wanted to make aside from the wedding. While I foraged around the neighborhood even down to the week of the ceremony, my dad stepped in to help cut them to size and hot glue them to wooden rounds. I was on a mission to get only what I needed then, but thought about when I would have more freedom to collect treasures I didn't need.

Then I read an article about the plogging sensation, which is jogging while picking up trash. It's cool that it started in Sweden, inspiring some feeling of solidarity with my heritage in participating, but I am not that great at the jogging part. I like picking up trash around my neighborhood and bring along another bag for foraging pine cones, acorns, bark, seeds, and the like.

And eventually some of it will find a use in covering my newly spray-painted Cinderella castle!