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Quiet reflections for a special day

5/5/2019

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Today is a special day for me and my children. It’s the 20th anniversary of the day my first wife Jill died of breast cancer. I remember the day and particularly the early morning a few hours after she died quite vividly. It was about 6am when I arrived home from the hospital and feeling numb and disoriented I sat shivering by the canal at the bottom of our garden where we used to live gazing into the reflections in the water.   It was a morning similar to this morning bright and beautiful and dazzling as the early morning sun bounced off the water. Jill loved sitting by the water and we all have fond memories of her sitting on the bench on the jetty drinking her morning coffee so I thought I would make my simple memorial through a movie that reflects the stillness and beauty in the water of our pond.

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​Every year at this time the foregetmenots bloom as if to remind us not to forget her. They poke up everywhere and you can't escape them. It's easy to see how we create meaning from such things. But she is never far from our thoughts and that will be until we cannot remember her any more. 

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    Garden & Beyond Notes
    My garden keeps me busy and gives me the exercise I need to keep fit, although it does damage me from time to time. But more than anything else it gives me pleasure, happiness and a sense of belonging and of doing something useful and worthwhile. It enables me to express myself creatively and draws my attention to the beauty and ecology of life. In this blog  I am telling the story of my garden and my involvement and experiences in it through my writing and the photos, movies, music, paintings and other artefacts - it inspires me to create. I have become more conscious of the UNs Sustainable Development Goals and our important role in enabling their achievement my experiments and projects in the natural world show how I respect and try to understand nature and try to enable life to flourish. I know that one day I will not be the custodian of this beautiful landscape we call our home. I must make the most of it now and preserve its presence in my memory knowing that it will carry on long after I am gone and that someone else will care for it and call it their home.
    In March 2022 I joined a group of environmental activists in my village and so I have decided to expand my blog to take in the natural environment of which my garden is a part.

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    Useful Links
    RE Betchworth
    Wildlife Garden Forum
    Surrey Wildlife Trust 
    Habitat Network
    Plant Identification UK
    ​GAIA
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    GOOGLE EARTH
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