It’s astonishing how patterned, and straightforward my tastes have become over the years. From a love of wild, blooming nature, to, well, perhaps a more subtle, and by design, perhaps a more natural look at my gardens.

When I’ve been out within the wilds, there is symmetry at play, even in the wildest, deepest nooks. It’s there, in the spiral of pinecones, or flocks of migrating birds, a forest of Beeches or mighty Red Pines, swathes of summer grasses swaying in the breezes.

The play of light through the branches, that dapples the earth. The way the light creates stainglass imagery’s across the late afternoon understory, tis magical.

Then the other day, in a fit of inspiration, I marched my way down the street to the hardware store and decided I’d buy myself another of those lovely stepping-stones I saw on sale the day before (I found this lonely Lady/Japanese Hybridy Fern, on sales :( poor lonely thing).

WELL, I brought my prize home, snuggled it into place. Lovely. Stepped on it to make sure, SNAP!. Damn it all, it was a wall plaque.

SOooo…I call it “ritually” sacrificed to the garden…ah…and note what it has written on it.

Ahem.

Soooo…my thinking is this – the bronze age Peoples, say 5000 or so years ago, they would ritually break objects that represented something to them, had worth, and cast it into the water, as in the Arthurian Legends. There are several aspects of that story that probably actually date BACK perhaps to a time just after that time, known as the Iron Age. These peoples preceeded the Romans in Britian. They had come over from areas of France and parts of Germany. Many of their beliefs centred around old stories, myths of the age of legends before them. Their primary belief was in communicating with the ancestors, and with land based dieties, as offerings for wealth and prosperity, health and happiness.

I decided my sacrifice was genuine, if initially intended for another purpose, still, it had value to me.

Perhaps my garden is teaching me humility. Perhaps :-)