Full Circle

Here we are in the middle of June. Flaming June as it’s known in the UK, except at the moment it’s flaming cold. We’ve been promised summer, but so far there is little sign of it. Not a great deal has been happening this month, which is good as the previous month was busy. At the end of April, Dave and I were away in North Devon for a weekend helping to celebrate my nephew Gary’s 50th birthday. It was a surprise meal for him as he wasn’t expecting the whole family to be waiting there at the Thai restaurant. A lot of fun, wine, food and a fab cake decorated with Star Wars characters (Gary’s a huge fan) and photos of his life as a roll of film all made out of icing.

On the Sunday we met on Croyde Beach, renowned for its surfing, where Gary’s son, our little George (who is far from little now) loves to surf. I may have mentioned before that the surfing team there and my niece Nicki created an adaptive surf board for him. He loves it and it has made such a difference to him in fulfilling his world. Following on from that, a days later, a national TV channel interviewed and filmed Nicki and George, his surf team and another disabled surfer on the great work being achieved there. The programme aired a few weeks ago. The piece is not very long and I hope this video link of the interview works for you if you wish to take a look.

Back to the current: On the home front, many years ago back in the early 1980s when Dave and I decided to turn our backyard from a vegetable patch to a proper garden, I wanted a small pond put it. That pond morphed into a swimming pool sized koi pond, over 8ft deep, 3 of which were above ground. Keeping koi and the pond going was becoming harder each year for Dave so we gave the fish away and demolished the pond, turning it into a flower bed, commonly known as the the bog garden as it is always wet as there is no drainage, but the plants love it.

Our next door neighbour had two ground level ponds in her garden, a consequence of which we always have frogs in our garden. She moved away last year. The new neighbours, are a lovely family but not gardeners, and they have sadly filled in both ponds.

Pottering in the garden last week, moving rose bushes and weeding, we disturbed a lot of our frogs, small as well as large. Dave commented that now the ponds next door had gone, we probably will not have any frogs next year. He was quiet after saying this and I thought no more of it. Sat enjoying a well-earned cup of coffee, his face lit up. “How about we put in a small pond for the frogs,” he said. I laughed. “That was all I wanted in the first place,” came my reply. “But yes, let’s do it.”

The difficulty now is deciding where to put a small ground level pond. We have several locations it could go, we just at the moment cannot make up our minds.

So yes, things do come full circle. And also, if you wait long enough, wishes, no matter how small or insignificant, can come true. Has this ever happened to you?

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