Posts Tagged: stress

Fountain Time

Sometimes I sit in my garden and enjoy listening to the quiet. I spend the better part of my day listening to kids, and I wouldn't have it any other way, but every now and then I just love to hear the quiet. However, lately I have been sitting out there and thinking it would be really nice to have some sort of fountain. I've had a birdbath for a number of years, and I keep it full of fresh water because so many birds stop by it every day. They love to take a short "dip" in the water and then fly off. I figure that the little sounds of water I hear when they are bathing would be that much nicer to hear coming from the sound of a small fountain, right?

Most of us have heard that the sound of water can be very soothing and even help lower our stress level. It can actually help cool you down to hear the sound of water on a hot day, and with the intense heat we are prone to in the summer, that could be a very good thing.  The area around the fountain, having a higher level of humidity, is great for the plants in the garden. Also, the addition of any water feature in a landscape is beneficial to the birds and insects we want in our gardens. It gives them a place to rehydrate and cool off.

I think I have convinced myself that it's time for a fountain!

Heat wave generates hits

With a heat wave settling in on California for the next few days, the UC ANR news and information office shared its collection of helpful information for preventing heat stress in outdoor workers, which is compiled in a media kit on the news and information Web site, http://news.ucanr.org. The news release went out yesterday, and the information was made available to the Fresno Bee's 157,546 readers this morning.

Cool!

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