Hello and welcome to five minutes in nature with me Liz Scott and you join me outside on a very cool crisp night.
I'm actually back home now and I'm standing in my back garden.
Last night I was in my mum's back garden now I'm in my back garden and I'm walking across the grass and it's crunching underfoot.
It's crispy frosty night and I was hoping to go out for a little walk this evening but it's so cold and the roads are so dicey and slippery I just daren't go out at the moment for fear of falling over.
In fact this morning when I was at mum's house and I usually get up about half past six and go for a morning walk regardless of the weather.
I've been out in all weathers storms winds rain you name it but today was the first day I didn't go I ventured outdoors and just realised that the whole road was like an ice skating rink it was treacherous and so I went back inside again and had an early breakfast and waited a few hours before the sun had risen and at least melted some of the ice.
It's been a really cold day.
Today is actually a reflection on love and the many ways that love can be expressed and I suppose in some ways there's a traditional idea maybe if it's a romantic love you think about love being expressed through flowers for example or taking someone out for a meal or giving them a gift and I just want to look at love from a slightly different angle today because I've experienced love being expressed today and it's been in different ways.
When I eventually made it out walking this morning I met my friend I was meant to meet her for an early coffee but in the end I met her about 10 o'clock when it was a bit safer for me to go walking.
We had a good chat and a good cup of coffee and she was explaining about her mum.
Her mum is very elderly and is finding things increasingly difficult and has been living independently with a lot of help from my friend that supported her mum to live independently and they just realised both her and her mum have realised that she just can't continue doing this anymore.
She's finding it very hard to do the general chores and to feed herself and so over Christmas they came to a decision her and her mum that it was time to look for care homes and as my friend was telling me this she became really emotional.
She loves her mum so much and she'd really hoped that she would have been able to support her to live at home for as long as possible and she has helped to live at home for a long long time and for her as she explained that the time was now right for her to find a residential home,
A care home for her mum.
She just choked up and in that conversation I saw love spilling through.
It was like the volume had been turned up loud on love.
Here was a daughter who loved her mum,
Wanted the best for her mum and was doing the best for her mum and in this transition of life which was moving her mum from an independent lifestyle to having support she's just felt a deep connection for her mum and a deep love and it was expressed through her actions of supporting her mum but also through her tears.
So that's one illustration of love.
Another illustration of love is with me and my mum.
My mum is elderly too and one of the ways I express my love for her is when I go up and look after her I do a lot of cleaning,
I do a lot of cleaning.
Vacuuming and dusting and washing up and mopping floors and just making sure that the house feels fresh and clean and I don't particularly enjoy doing it,
It's not something I relish doing,
I find it quite tiring and yet for me that is an expression of love and I realised that that was also my mum's expression of love.
She would come down and help me sometimes when she was younger and I was needing a bit of support,
Maybe gardening or in the house,
She would come down and help,
That's what she did and it just got me thinking today in a way that has me feel quite touched and teary in a really healthy way,
A really nourishing way.
Just the many expressions of love and how love is expressed in so many ways and actually recognising that these actions are love in action,
It's a way of somebody saying I love you,
That for me feels really special.
So today is all about love,
The different guises of love and how it shows up in our lives.
