Christmas Holiday Winter Holiday Craft Ideas

Its the most wonderful time of the year, so the song goes.  Nature crafts sweeten our lives.  Here are some ideas to brighten your holidays, give you something fun to do with the family, and provide some gift ideas.  These activities can be done with people of all ages, although the ones I feature in photos are all conceived and executed by seniors I work with at nursing homes, assisted living and independent living facilities.  

The first are door hanger decorations.  My father cuts the shape out with recycled card board.  You can use a can or bottle to use as a template for the circle.  These collages can be created for many different holidays and seasons.  Cutting, pasting, gluing may be easy for you, but difficult for my seniors.  Diminished vision due to macular degeneration makes it hard to see the pictures.  Arthritic hands makes it painful to utilize scissors to cut pictures.  Alzheimers disease creates difficulty concentrating and focusing on completing tasks.  With my assistance they are able work through their impairments to create wonderful holiday treasures.  We utilized recycled magazines, advertisements and catalogues as a source of supplies.

Similar in concept but more difficult to do are the holiday wreaths.  These can be a theme of holiday greenery, holiday foods or specific Christmas or Chanukah colors.  I suggest the cutting around the inner circle and outer circle be after all the pictures are chosen and glued.  This saves a great deal of time since the activity must be completed within an hour.  The ones featured below are fall harvest vegetable wreaths.  Old seed catalogues, newspaper flyers and magazines were the source of materials for this project.

Well I hope this gave you some inspiration to create beautiful decorative art with recycled materials.  No two creations look alike, just as our thumb prints are all unique.

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Open letter to destroyed alzheimer horticultural therapy gardens

It has been a productive and joyous six years working with you,  the residents and staff at the nursing home.    As a recreation therapist you "get it" and understand the benefit of therapeutic engaging activities more than the average activity director at other facilities.  The nursing home is fortunate to have you there.  

We have nurtured along four butterfly gardens, four vegetable gardens and four herb gardens. They have matured into very beautiful healing gardens where there was cement, fencing and empty beds.

I was shocked to visit the facility today and see most everything thrown away, hundreds of dollars of valuable plants as well as man hours of work gone.  Residents and staff and family members at the units came up to me asking, what happened to the garden?  They have grown to enjoy the therapeutic healing environment.  When I suggested we can plant again, their response was a forlorn "What's the point?" 

The garden cuts down stress, it gives them pleasure, and keeps employees happy at work. The garden also provided a quick snack (cherry tomatoes),   healing herbal teas (rosemary, thyme and tarragon.  The papayas gave a healthy nutritious snack.  All of this is gone.  Luckily the aloe remains.  

Red poisonous mulch is in the  beds, which I had removed in the past. This is an inappropriate mulch for a health facility.  Often the recycled wood is used that is pressure treated with a copper arsenic solution. That is why it is banned from playgrounds.  The red dye stains sidewalks, your hands and may be toxic as well.  If the bad does not state "no recycled wood" it is dangerous.  

The mulch was piled onto the base of all the shrubs, which can kill the plants.  The agricultural extension office suggests keeping all mulch several inches from the base of plants.  

All our cherry tomato plants are gone, they must have sprayed a toxic herbicide on the garden beds. 

I know the administration would not intentionally do harm to the residents and staff and family members.  Why no one was informed before is a mystery to me.  It was a sad day at the nursing home this morning indeed.  

Robert Bornstein

www.robbornstein.com 

Thank you for stopping by my garden blog.  You are welcome to subscribe and follow me on the other social sites as well.
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A new vision of the garden

Well I finally decided to go under the laser and improve my vision with Lasik surgery.  This Friday I had the surgery and now have perfect distance vision and my close reading is improving  rapidly.  I am composing this with no glasses.  It is so exciting, I have worn glasses since I was in the third grade.

I think it is a miracle.  Colors are more vivid.  Depth perception is increased.  I am so happy and this is only the second day.  Every day I will heal more and get back into the swing of normal activities.  The first week I am not allowed to garden!  While the eyes are healing, no dirt can come in contact with the eyes.  No sweat can enter the eyes.  I have to sleep with goggles so I will not rub my eyes by mistake.  No water can touch the eyes for the first week as well.

My doctor mentioned to me that quite of few of his patients remark they see leaves on trees for the first time.  He was intrigued by my horticultural therapy profession.  It turns out his wife is an accomplished nature photographer and is interested in placing her magnificent photographs in senior residences.  He gave me her card and I will contact her soon.

Here are some wonderful blooms from the garden this week.

Thank you for visiting my private backyard garden.  I got an anonymous call this week asking if they could come down to pick fruit in my garden.  I returned the call and got an answering machine.  I explained I do not have a farm, it is just a small urban yard and there is not enough fruit to to have people come and pick.

Thank you for visiting my blog and I enjoy reading yours as well.  It is fun following each other on the social networks, looking forward to seeing you there as well.   

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Summer in the garden

Well we are mid summer in the Fort Lauderdale garden.  We have 6 months of hot sticky wet weather and 6 months of warm dry weather in South Florida.  We had 27 inches of rain since June, and the mosquitoes are out in full force.  The bees, butterflies and birds have been very active.  The photo below is of our state butterfly, the zebra longwing.

To stay cool, I have been drinking iced tea with mint, iced coffee and coconut water.

The royal poinciana trees are in full bloom, and they are always a joy to behold. Here is an article and slide show of the trees.
Grand Dame of trees the royal poinciana

YouTube asked its contributors to make an introduction to their channel, so I completed this last weekend.  My food and garden channel is taking off!  Thank you for subscribing and viewing the videos.

Two weekends ago was the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden  Mango Festival.  I was asked to write an article there for Examiner.com, and I wrote two.  Here they are!

Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden features a mango festival featuring the mangoes of Mexico

Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden features a mango brunch

I have been so busy picking mangoes and starfruit, pruning, weeding and planting lately in my backyard garden.  At my horticultural therapy business, I have been picking up new accounts and coming up with new activities for the older ones.  In the summer the heat is too strong for the seniors so we do more indoor activities.  I have been very remiss in writing my book though, so much going on!

Thank you for visiting my blog and I enjoy reading yours as well.  It is fun following each other on the social networks, looking forward to seeing you there as well.  

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Healing Power of Roses on #rosechat radio

On Saturday morning, March 23, tune in to #rosechat radio and learn about the healing power of roses.  As a horticulture therapist, roses play an important role in my healing engaging activities.

Currently I work with seniors and roses play an important role in their memories.  What did the flower girl drop on the floor on their wedding day?  Rose petals.  What flowers did they get from their husbands for special occasions? Roses.  What parade did they watch every New Years Day?  The rose parade.  What was one of their favorite flowers to grow in their gardens?  Roses.

My residents love to hold a rose and the first thing they do is hold the flower to their nose.  I only grow the most fragrant roses.  As we age our senses diminish. Some seniors I work with have lost their sense of smell totally.

Over the years I have installed several rose gardens at nursing homes, independent senior living facilities and assisted living apartments, senior activity centers, day programs, and Alzheimer units.

The thorns can become a health hazard to those on blood thinners, diabetics, and the frail elderly.  Be careful where you plant them.  I like them to be close enough to have access but not in the way so they get scratched as they walk or wheel themselves by the bushes.

All the above roses are photos from my backyard garden.  I love growing roses and always have bud vases in the kitchen and bathrooms with roses in them.  The link below is for the rose radio broadcast.  You can catch it live or listen at your leisure at any time after the broadcast.  Click on the link below to listen.

Rose chat radio guest Robert Bornstein explains the healing powers of the rose.

Thank you for stopping by my blog and see you again soon.


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Farm to table ratatouille

Enjoy this new video on how to cook a delicous Ratatouille.  This is an easy, fast  recipe that will delight your guests.

I have been very busy filming videos, blogging, writing for Examiner.com during nights and weekends while practicing horticulture therapy during the weekdays.
So much work, so little time.

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