Flowers in Spring

"A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever". I read that in a garden on a piece of wood at Hogsback (a beautiful forested village) at the place where we were staying with my father. The words are a poem by John Keats.

I was at quite a young impressionable age and for some reason that little inscription in the garden stuck with me and made me appreciate nature.There's a picture here of a flower grown from seed, it took months to grow and finally bloom. It will be interesting to see what other flowers might bloom; they were from a variety pack.

There's something magical about growing your own plants and flowers and trees and even vegetables and herbs, especially if you plant them from seeds. Your'e never quite sure if they going to grow and eventually bloom or produce fruit or not.

I grew vegetables successfully years ago and still grow some tomatoes in pots. If I ever have more ground available I'll start a vegee patch.

So here's this flower finally growing and hoping many more will emerge and bloom. The satisfaction of gardening comes in the finished product, i.e. leaves and trees, fruit and veg, and flourishing blooms.

Enjoy it while we can, nature is like one big garden anyway. Get into it if you can, enjoy a hike or shorter walk at the seaside.

Plants are good for the atmosphere too, lets repair the hole in the ozone layer by planting trees and plants, whatever the outcome we can enjoy them while we're still here on planet earth.

I went for a walk the other day on the Fynbos nature trail, which is a trail that runs above the sea, near the city in which I live. I could see the sea in the distance; the walk was enjoyable although I didn't walk on the narrower path which I must do next time, but on a wider path that I could see has recently been cleared with some type of mobile machine, the branches are cut at the same level near the ground and the grass is also trimmed like this.

I walked altogether for about 2 hours and one could smell the honey-like smell of the plants that grow there, some nice looking blooms, some yellow, white, red, and a bright mauve coloured thin-petalled flower that stands out amongst the green, yellow and yellow ochre plants that abound in this area.

Life's too short not to check out nature whenever possible especially in spring when colours come to life in the flowers that blossom.