Hello Steemians,
This is not a horror story; on the contrary, it is a story about my stroll through nature. I love to have some time for myself and especially if I spend it in nature. Today (03.04.2018.) it was a beautiful day in my little town called Pitomaca, Croatia. And I had to grab my mini hatchet and phone to enjoy and capture a couple of moments. I always bring a mini hatchet with me for possible self-defense from wild animals (I never had to use it, but you never know), and it is always handy when I'm cutting my path through woods, or I need to reach something high.
My stroll started behind my house where my grandfather takes care of few swarms of bees. He built them little houses and a church. Whole my life I live close to bees and they are such amazing animals. We have our honey that cannot be compared with other jars of honey you buy in a supermarket. Some years we had up to 7 swarms/houses of bees, but because of sickness and high growth of technologies that number is now lowered to only 2.
As I said I love bees, they are such noble animals. Without their hard work, we would not have fruits and all of the different number of flowers. Albert Einstein said: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."
Let's try to save them and let's try to save us. I don't want to scare you so off topic: Do you know what kind of bees produce milk? (think about it, the answer is under the next picture)
AND THE ANSWER IS:
"booBiEEeeeS"
Do you see this flowers on the previous picture? It is great for bees in this early stage of spring because it is one of the first flowers before all the plants start to blossom. This plant not only keeps bees working hard it is also great for people. If you take the pink flower out on the bottom of it, there is nectar which is sweet, and it boosts my senses every time. It smells good, and it tastes even better.
I love this food directly from nature; it connects me with people that were eating stuff like that thousands and thousands of years ago. With this plant up here there is kind of berries that I like to find and eat in this part of a year. It is called šipak in my language, and it is from the family of roses. It is extremely healthy; you can eat it, make a tea or even make candy out of it. First, they are small pink roses, and they turn into this berries on the picture under, but they are edible after the low temperatures outside (low temperatures makes them soft).
Today, after seeing two deers in the distance and couple of wild rabbits, I was able to take a photo only of a ladybug in a grass field. I remember this little insect from my childhood; as kids, we would always catch them in our hands and watch them fly away. This animal has black dots on their red/yellow body, and as kids, we would compete who would catch a ladybug with more dots.
On my return trip home I got interested in mistletoe on a tree. It is famous as a tree of a Christmas kiss ("Kiss underneath mistletoe"), it is healthy, and it was used as medicine from Nordic cultures to the father of medicine: "Hippocrates of Kos" in Ancient Greece. It is the only green thing right now on the threes, and it looks like the green ball.
I did some research about mistletoe and decided to chop it down from a lower tree with my hatchet. It is not the tree itself; it uses different trees as a host. And it's spreading with birds that are eating berries off the mistletoe and then they are transferring its juices to other trees.
It is healthy for hearth and blood vessels; it relaxes muscles it is also anticancerous. White berries are not edible for humans, and they are toxic to them. But rest of the plant it is entirely healthy.
Photo of mistletoe berries:
Thank you for reading guys, I hope you liked my "day from nature" post. All pictures are original and mine.
