The Christmas season for 2017 has come and gone too quickly.
A wonderful time with family and getting to spend precious time with grandchildren.
The New Year is an opportunity to remember how very blessed we are, even though it has been a year of challenges too.
And looking ahead to the New Year unfolding before us I am reminded that gardening is a wonderful metaphor for hope. As gardeners, we plant seeds in the dark, damp soil hoping that they will sprout and grow.
Of course, planting a seed is only the beginning. If we've planned ahead, we know that we are planting seeds that will produce either flowers for beauty, or food for nourishment, or even a tree to shade and shelter us from the elements.
Sometimes though, gardening can throw up surprises. Planting miss-labelled seeds, to find that instead of growing vegetables, we've planted fragrant flower seeds instead. Yet, these aren't wasted.
Flowers provide forage for bees that in turn pollinate our food producing plants, like fruit trees. In gardening, sometimes surprises turn out to be just what was needed.
And planting too many flowers can never be a bad thing!
So this year, I'm planning to plant more flowers than ever!
