Here at Focused friends we’ve enjoyed creating various challenges for each other over recent months. We’ve had Poetry (Sonnet challenge) Art (flat lay collage creating) and several video challenges where one of us will set the challenge and the other members will submit their photos, pictures or video clips to be combined into one.
For this challenge, I asked the team to showcase their gardens – in a two minute time-limit. Sounds easy, but hey you try it! Once you get out there and start looking .. and I mean really looking at your garden you realise just how much there is to see and to enjoy.
I’ve always appreciated the beauty of a well tended garden, but having had children our garden was a play area for many, many years. And that was great. It was a fun, safe place for them to be, to have their friends over and to bounce and slide and run and play. Hearing their laughter was the best thing and my garden was alive in a way that is different to that which plants and flowers bring. Later years brought our dog, a lively Cocker Spaniel to join the mayhem! She also enjoyed bouncing, sliding, running … digging, trampling, and pulling up anything that I tried to plant! Again, as a much loved member of the family I just enjoyed being relaxed about my garden being a place of lively fun for the family. We had a space to sit, a place to enjoy the occasional BBQ ; it was enough for ours and the children’s and dog’s out-door needs.
More recently life has begun to change. A new era. Our children now both grown, our dog much happier these days to sit and enjoy some warmth from the sun than to dig and create havoc. Time to start a new purpose for the garden. A place of peace and a place to enjoy a bit of creativity. I love to go out with my camera and capture moments where nature comes to share our space in the form of bees, hedgehogs, butterflies and so much more. Other times, to try to hold onto the beauty given by the way a petal curls, or the dew on a leaf catches and reflects the sunlight. Yes, the garden is changing and now offers something new for a new era. It’s been both therapeutic and fun to spend time in it, slowly planting, growing and experimenting with developing it. There’s still much to do, but I find it an excellent outlet and source for creativity, mindfulness exercises, physical exercise – all essential to our general wellbeing.
I hope that you enjoy our collaborative video, and are perhaps inspired to step outside and enjoy your own garden, yard, or space, in your own way. And please feel free to share with us what you enjoy about your own garden.
Focused Friends 
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