Wooden houses surrounded by a thick forest, classical music playing softly in the background, a very special cafe, three meals a day and several outdoor activity areas. This sounds like a dream vacation arrangement (安排). But this is not a place for people. It’s for cats in the province of Samsun, Türkiye.

Kedi Kasabas, or “cat town”, is one interesting place in the country, a place where cats can experience what real comfort is!

The town, which covers an area of around 20 acres, is run by the local city and most admitted guests have a hard backstory. “All cats here are homeless and usually go through suffering s before being brought here. They are either injured or mentally suffer. We treat them and put them back into the town. The environment here is really beautiful for them,” Faruk Kan, a Kedi Kasabas vet, said.

Kan is not the only vet working at the shelter. There’s a whole team looking after the cats and making sure all their needs are met. The place even has a special area for sick or injured cats, where they receive personalized (个性化的) treatment.

There are currently 150 animals living in “cat town”, and the number keeps rising. There are wooden houses where they can rest, and also houses designed for socializing. During the winter they are provided with heated accommodation, so feeling convenient and warm is a sure thing for these furry creatures.

The love for cats seems to be a Turkish favourite. Istanbul is known for being home to several hundred thousand cats. There, people take care of street cats like kings. The four-legged friends are fed and kept healthy and they have already become part of the city view.

Even though cats may have a happy life outdoors in the forest or wandering around in the city streets, there’s nothing like having a stable (稳定的) home, lying next to a human friend.

Hedgerows (矮树篱) are as British as fish and chips, the national dish of Great Britain. Without these walls of trees, shrubs or grasses, the country’s scenery wouldn’t be the same. Over the centuries, large numbers of hedgerows were planted to keep in farm animals,and some of today’s are as historic as many old churches, dating back as far as 800 years. Here hedge laying — the art of planting and shaping hedges — is a specialized skill that has been practiced for hundreds of years. Today, Britain has about 435,000 miles of them, a length that is greater than that of its roads.

In recent years, scientists have come to view these man-made structures as important ecosystems. The best-studied benefit of hedgerows is the remarkable biodiversity — the variety of different types of animals and plants living together — they maintain. One 2019 study in Belgium found that hedgerows contained more species of nonwoody flowering plants in a given area than forests did. More plant species often mean more animals. One British scientist, who spent two years observing an old hedgerow near his home, counted an amazing 2,070 species visiting and living in it — mostly insects, but also birds rats, lizards, etc.

Lauren Ponisio, a researcher at the University of Oregon, found in 2016 that growing a 300-meter hedgerow would help save around $4,000 in pest-control and pollination costs over seven years. Curiously, besides pollinating the crops themselves, the wild bees encourage non-native honeybees introduced by farmers to become more efficient pollinators, too. “Introduced honeybees are super lazy, and they’ ll be like ‘Yes, I will just hang out on this flower forever,’” Ponisio explains. But upon meeting a wild bee, they’ll fly off to the next flower or plant.

There’s now a growing drive for expanding hedgerows. In the UK, Natural England has planned to increase the country’s hedgerow network by 40 percent. Recently the French government announced plans to plant an additional 4,300 miles. Even in the US, where hedgerows are much less of a cultural legacy (遗产), the government has begun to realize the many important benefits of planting hedgerows. More American farmers are receiving money provided by the US Natural Resources Conservation Service, which helps pay for planting pollinator habitats.

A lot of people find it difficult to do exercise regularly, even though they know it’s good for their physical and mental (身心上的) health. Yet keeping on a workout routine doesn’t necessarily go to the gym or run around your neighborhood. Gardening is a great example of a popular hobby that can be used as a workout.

Nashville resident Tom Adkinson, 72, is on board with the idea of gardening to stay fit. He has three gardens, which he uses primarily to grow tomatoes, sweet banana peppers and okra. Like traditional exercise, Adkinson does a lot of preparation before gardening, and then he spends hours watering and weeding (除草) all three gardens, involving bending and stretching, which he compares to performing garden yoga.

“It is wise of Adkinson to do so. Even though gardening may not appear difficult, using the body in new ways can make you hurt if you don’t warm up beforehand,” said Zeller, who teaches at the Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Cape May County in New Jersey.

Working in your garden just two hours a week could improve your mood. And the communal gardening, which is done by a number of people as a group in communities and schools, provides social benefits that can reduce stress and help fight against loneliness and even dementia according to studies.

“With all these benefits, gardening for fitness will be a trend (趋势) in the coming year,” announced Mandal, CEO of the fitness coaching app Future, “Our users at Future have already been asking their coaches to add gardening and landscaping activities into their routines because it’s easy to get and fit into their lifestyle.”