28/02/2026
A beautiful trip to a local pinetum yesterday reminded me of how when we moved from Dubai, the amount of green everywhere actually hurt our eyes. I remember being at the top of a hill with a stunning view of a valley and my son asking “how is there so much green?” I also remember my partner saying the amount of green was giving him a headache. 🤣
The human eye can see more shades of green than any other colour.
We inherited this from our ancestors who needed to be able to distinguish between leaves and plants for survival purposes - to be able to forage food amongst foliage.
Because we evolved in natural environments, our eyes became attuned to the most abundant colour - 💚
Being in green spaces (which just means being in nature - could be at a beach, or in a desert - doesn’t have to have a lot of the colour green) - is not just a nice thing to do, it’s absolutely crucial to give the brain a chance to recover from the intensity of everything else we do.
Deep down somewhere we know this instinctively. The feeling after being at the beach for a few hours. The serenity of getting home post dog-walk. The stillness in the soul when lying on your back, on the earth, sunshine on your face.
We instinctively know that this is exactly what we needed. A break from the addictive screens, time to think of nothing specific, to do nothing specific, silence.
At the moment I’m obsessed with listening to birds. Check out Xeno-Canto.org for a total geek out on nature sounds. 🤘🏼🥰
