Flaunt it Friday

April 24, 2026 ~ my word (s) ~ 6 Comments

My Flaunt it Friday this week is a small achievement but one I’d been putting off. Each year, as Spring arrives, I think about the vegetables I might grow in the garden. We now have 2 large raised beds for this purpose, our garden being small. This year, though, we’d made the decision to completely empty the beds. One was bulging underneath, the other we wanted to move to a different place. The reason I’d been holding back is that my right hand and wrist have been very painful; rheumatoid arthritis has taken its toll. I don’t like to give up though so, on a day I felt okay-ish, I put on my wrist support, took some painkillers and we got to it.

Sometimes, the small things give the greatest satisfaction. Now I can get planting, which is much easier.

What have you achieved this week, however big or small? I’d love to hear from you.

Your Garden is not Your Garden (with a nod to Kahlil Gibran)

August 2, 2025 ~ my word (s) ~ Leave a comment

When I first came across Kahlil Gibran’s poem, On Children, back in the 1980s, I was taken by the way in which those words are a guide to parenting. He said:

“Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and the daughters of life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.”

As I looked at the images caught on my trail camera in the garden, it struck me that, similarly, our gardens are not our gardens. We are merely their custodians for a period of time. Badgers have lived where my garden resides for many more years than I have; foxes too. It’s a humbling thought and one I hold as I go about tending my garden, ensuring there is water for the wildlife, flowers for the bees to seek pollen, safe places for hedgehogs.

My garden is not my garden. I share it with many others and I feel privileged to do so.