NatureKenneth WebbMay 07, 2025Through the Window, RSComment

Through the Garden Window

NatureKenneth WebbMay 07, 2025Through the Window, RSComment

Nature

Through the Garden Window

May 2025

No matter the weather, I like to start each day in the garden. In the winter months this often commences with uncovering plants that I have protected overnight against the frost, carrying others from my study – often referred to as the garden room by the family – of the troughs with tiny conifers and other plants, so that photosynthesis can at once continue its miraculous operation. It is the very heartbeat of Nature.

It gives me an opportunity to gather my thoughts as I sit quietly and enjoy a coffee and read about some aspect of nature and ornithology. Firstly, though, I like to walk around the tiny garden, observe changes from overnight or since yesterday morning. Always, there is some change. Nature lives and breathes. Nature is not inanimate. Nature has spirit and soul, and writing that I picture the outcry from the narrow-minds that remind me, oh so gladly, that I am not on a narrow path but on a wide, very wide road.

Oh, thank goodness. You’re writing physically, I thought for a moment you were writing metaphorically!

Pardon? Ah, I see. I’m doing both.

What? BOTH?!? Oh, well then, there is NO hope. I always knew there was something wrong with you. Silly man. The wide road leads to…

… yeah, yeah, yeah, perdition and all that rubbish. Shut up. Be away with you.

I have three books that are my daily anchor points. Many others also sail into view, so that if one views life from the bridge of a ship or deck of a small boat, then we have a flotilla. The larger the flotilla, the greater the variety of craft, and the wider and more comprehensive my knowledge, understanding and language become.

My daily appointment with Nature is sacrosanct. And on those days when extreme weather argue that wisdom suggests that I stay inside the French doors, I agree, but I do still step out, even if only for a moment, to catch the wind upon my face. Mind you, some days doing that, I’m faster in than out! Flippin Hek! That’s knife-like.

All the cobwebs are blown away. Cares of the world are made to rest a step or two. This is now my time , and I will not countenance its interruption.

Is this a new thing? No. When I lived high up on the Liverpool Waterfront every morning I would carefully open one of the lounge windows to have the sea spray, the salt air on my face and to gaze upon the Fort Perch Lighthouse seemingly ‘perched’ upon the rocks in the estuary just off Brighton-le-Sands.

The lighthouse gave me my day’s equilibrium, my navigation point. Then followed the brisk walk to the Moorfields Station to catch the Tube to work.

The capture of the Clouds is a beautiful study by RS. Perspective and balance and inner wellbeing are all captured, all framed within the half circle that Nature gave that day.