Have a blessed Winter Solstice

 

Storm Valkyrie 😘

Enjoy Winter

 

There are many ways to overcome effective seasonal disorder, abbreviated SAD, others call it "winter blues". Its the gloomy sensation of depression during the Winter season. Some believe it's just psychological and people who don't like dark cold Winters get extremely low. SAD often happens to women more than men. Usually it appears among young adults between the ages of 18 and 30 years old. Despite this figure made by Rush University, SAD also happens to about 2 million of people in the UK and 12 million people across Europe. 

This was always tackled by ways of enjoying it that often includes Yule celebrations and building snowmen. There are many ways of nipping the Winter in the bud, and they often mean keeping warm, getting a lot of sleep, keeping active, keeping warm, reading, making crafts and playing music. This is often health advice given by NHS. 

I would say go a bit further and enjoy food! Winter foods that I personally enjoy is soup, oats or porridge, root vegetables, cooked mushrooms, spice including ginger and cinnamon, berries, fish, nuts, honey and eggs. This is also my favourites: Stargazer pie and fruit cake.  

Storm Valkyrie 🌲 🌲🌲🌲       

Hibernating

 

Art by Roxxie Drox

This is the time now when some animals are going into hibernation for Winter. There are quite a number of animals that sleep for months and wake up in the Spring. This is why certain wildlife is hidden away during Winter because they've snuggled up. This is a list of some animals that sleep throughout Winter and who don't need to get up for anything:

Bears, bats, common poorwills (they're the only bird species to hibernate), wood frogs, turtles, bumblebees, snails, hedgehogs, groudhogs, snakes, flat-tailed dwarf lemurs, red squirrels, ground squirrels, woodchucks, female polar bears, prairie dogs, spiders, northern raccoons and lizards including house gecko. 

In that list, some animals don't sleep solidly but are half awake. Why do they do that? Winter is a season when food is scarce. For wild animals to go without food this is a huge problem, but as it's Winter  that causes low food supply, no more fruits, lack of plants to chew, no migrating fish or birds to hunt, and a barren landscape. Filled with cold damp temperatures, as the bitter cold arrives bringing possible snow in various high places, animals don't like to be in really unpleasant conditions. They would be feeling cold and hungry. So their own bodies close down for the Winter in a long sleep, so that they don't need food. 

Certain animals control their own warmth in shelter and dwellings that they make, mostly locating caves, tree hollows, nests and burrowing underground. While these animals sleep solidly throughout Winter, some of them can relax in a semi-hibernation state called torpor. There are animals that simply go into the torpid phase only, and many of them can be due to the conserve of energy for shorter times than hibernating. 

Sweet dreams 🌛

Storm Valkyrie

Cones

 

The most interesting part of a conifer tree is always its appearance. And besides the magnificent and beautiful way they look, is everything else about them too. Conifer trees, from pine, to spruce, have always been there with us since time began. They are tough hardy trees that can even grow up the sides of cold mountains. They can thrive during blizzards. And every Yuletide, these trees are popular to decourate. Not only that, but the trees give off an aroma similar to food, and its populace of cones scatter the branches and the floor. Now this is what I want to talk about. Cones. 

There are many types of cones. They're as varied as the conifer trees. One can learn about the temperatures just by looking at them. Cones are made of scales and these are shut tight during the wet weather and they open in dry air. Female cones contain seeds. In this, it's believed that pine cones are symbolic of fertility. 

The ancients made stone art of pine cones during the Bronze Age. There are Roman pine cones made of bronze guarded by peacocks. And bronze pine cones in Germany. The staff of Orisis features a pine cone with two serpents. In Scandinavian countries, children make cows from pine cones. These are edible, because pine trees produce fruit and nuts, and also needles that can be made into a tea. People have bakes with pine cones alone. They are full of healing properties and also a detergent. 

For medicine of the pine tree visit: Sacred science DIY recipes 

Storm Valkyrie 😃