Another Year of Nurture

Today I paid my annual allotment fees, proving my commitment to my allotment garden (and myself) for another whole year.

So, with my commitment to my plot, can I also commit to this blog I wonder? 

Looking back, I did not do too well last time!   But I think this time will be different.  

Whenever I visit my little plot I shall take my video camera with me, and I will post my Plot Progress!

Yup, I was happy to pay the allotment fee (although some plot-holders feel it's too high).  But for me, the price for my own personal piece of nature to nurture is a bargain.

It's not just my allotment garden that receives the nurturing, it is my very soul.  I just love being there, listening to the wind, the birds, and watching the life all around me.

---oo000oo---

This Saturday was warm and sunny, so I paid my little garden a visit.  The most exciting thing for me to see was that the bees are still alive! They were busily bombing in and out of their nest in the compost heap.

Why did I think they weren't alive?  

Well, I had had some help from a friend some months back, and unfortunately she unknowingly buried the bees nest under a huge pile of cleared weeds and hacked down brambles.  

She, quite rightly, thought she was just putting rubbish on a compost heap, not on a bees nest.

Anyway, I tried to play it down, but secretly I was horrified.  I thought the bee's home had been totally crushed.  

I watched helplessly as the worker bees returned to their home, only to find the entrance completely gone.  They searched in vain for a way in, as I tried to clear the 'rubble' off the nest, but the foliage had entwined itself and it was impossible.

I thought that was It for the bees.

But lo and behold, this weekend, there they were again!  I feel so relieved.

So here is a video of my beautiful bees, to-ing and fro-ing - and of me, rabbiting on about them.

What does this 'bee thing' say to me?

It says that the bees are more resilient than I gave them credit for.  That they and their hard work are not easily destroyed. 

That even if their nest was destroyed, they built it back up again.  

Last but not least, that one person's rubbish heap is another's haven or work of art.

---oo000oo---

I feel as though I have been given a reprieve, not just the bees. The message for me, is that there is always another opportunity to start again - and to build things up again, better, and stronger.

This kind of ties in rather well with my old website, that I felt I'd outgrown, and with the new website that I have now created. 

The old website was a little cluttered and full of all kinds of things.  If it interested or inspired me, up it went on the site.  

I think this made it a little hard to decipher exactly what I was offering.  Perhaps it looked a bit like a jumbled compost heap.

The new website is much more planned and organised.  I think it's now a clearer picture of what I do, and what I'm about.  At least I hope so.  It's ever evolving, just like my garden.

I really wish I'd kept up with this "Growing with My Garden" blog, and posted about what's been going on in my life these past months.   

But, for whatever reason, I didn't.  And I have decided not to beat myself up about it.

Instead, I am going to start again, like the bees.