Since I started this blog, I have often received tips on things I can do. People I know well, acquaintances, others acquaintances and total strangers have, via email, SMS, verbally and by telephone, told me about things-to-do to post on the blog. One of the best tips I got was over a bowl of soup at a diner in Gothenburg last winter. Malin told me about her mother and their nature box. 

When Malin was little, she and her mother used to go into the woods and draw up a nature box. A nature box is a square of 1 X 1 meter you, in some way, measure up in the forest. You can draw an outline with a stick in the ground, spray it with paint that doesn't harm nature, put up sticks in the ground at each corner of the square, or do whatever you want really. Then visit the box once a month or once a quarter and see what happens there. This is a way to learn about nature. 

For those of you who grew up in the country perhaps this is not something amazing. But for us, who have grown up with television as our third parent, and for us, whose mothers cried out that dinner was ready to the balcony, this whole nature thing is still exciting and beautiful. So during the next commercial break I'm going to go out and make me a nature box by inserting four cola cans in the ground.