One of things that looked like a bit of a daunting task when we moved into our current house was the back garden. As is the tradition in the UK that new houses have a landscaped (cheaply) front garden, but a back garden that is a complete mess. They don’t even clean out all of the detritus that results from the building process. All that happens is that it gets flatten and covered over with a thin veneer of top soil. Stick your spade in anywhere and you’ll come up with a brick, or a lump of concrete, or some piping and enough nails to rebuild your house. They don’t even put up a fence between you and your neighbours, that’s left to a simple piece of wood marking the boundary.

Like many people who move into a new house, the cost of moving wiped us out financially. In that situation the garden always goes to the bottom of the list. That is, apart from the fencing, but that’s only because it’s in your contract to get it resolved within the first few weeks. After a couple of years catching up financially and doing the interior of the house we finally got around to the back garden a couple of years ago. We had wanted to do it ourselves, but in the end we paid someone to do the landscaping so that we could enjoy the planting. Like all gardens it’s taken a little while to get established, but this year it has become a real pleasure.

Gardens are great at encouraging you to look at the overall plan and at the same time looking at the smallest detail. The way that a fern unravels and extends is fabulous. The growth rate of a vine is phenomenal.

At one level the garden is just a collection of billions and trillions of atoms. At another level it’s a puzzle of interrelated cells that even the most powerful computer couldn’t describe. At another level it’s a collection of leaves and branches and flowers. Each of these levels makes our garden interesting, even fascinating, and each of them contributes to the knowledge that this is our place of tranquility, of creativity, of refreshing, of play, of relationship, of fellowship.

The garden is especially a place of play for the children. Our latest edition is a trampoline and the kids would bounce all day every day if their schedule or the English weather would let them. Having children in a garden just extends it’s appeal as a place of family and togetherness.

The other thing about a Garden is that it doesn’t just appeal to one sense, or even two, it gets to every one of them. We deliberately chose plants that contributed scents and taste. This year we have extended that a bit by integrating food producing plants with the other ‘pretty’ plants. A bit like the approach they used to take in the old cottage gardens, but in a more modern way. So hopefully, later in the year, we will be eating the garden too.

Having a garden is a blessing that we could so easily overlook, but spend any time out there and I am soon reminded of the abundant generosity of God. It’s not about us begging it to produce – it just produces, and often it produces far more than we expected.

^{Hebrews 12:15 Make sure no one gets left out of God’s generosity. Keep a sharp eye out for weeds of bitter discontent. A thistle or two gone to seed can ruin a whole garden in no time.}

I can read - brilliant.

When I was at school reading was a complete pain the rear as far as I was concerned. I only passed my O-level English on my third attempt and it really got me down. I didn’t read the classics or anything like that as a child.

But, somehow, through it all I learnt to read.

As I got older a change came in my life where I not only learnt to read I actually started to enjoy it. This was a work of God.

What’s more, when I started to enjoy reading, God put me in a place with a couple of individuals who loved to read also (Vince and Martin). Their reading was completely different to mine and yet we enjoyed each others reading, they even changed my reading.

I’ve just finished reading The Shadow in the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon a book which I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near when I was 18 but now I love. But I’m also reading The Life You’ve Always Wanted by John Ortberg which is a completely different book. There is now a stack of books in my study which is getting to big for the shelves but I can’t bare to get rid of them because each one of them has spoken to me in some way. In a sense, each one of them is a part of me. Every one of them from The Darwin Awards III to The Second Reformation.

In recent years I’ve also rediscovered great picture books to. I could sit for hours and just take in the wonder of the Waters of Cumbria.

I know that it is such a blessing to be given both the ability and the resources.

I love family days out. This one was with our usual family friend – Dave Brown. Dave was my Best Man and has been an integrated part of our family for nearly 20 years. Dave is 10 years older than Sue and I, but we share so much it makes absolutely no difference.

This family day was a walk around Tarn Hows, but starting from the Ambleside to Coniston road so we walked up the waterfalls to the Tarn. You just can’t beat the Lake District on a nice sunny day after rain, when the trees are green and the waterfalls are full. It’s beautiful (just look at the pictures).

We are so fortunate to be so close to somewhere so beautiful. The strange thing was, it was actually made more beautiful by the damage caused by the storms over the winter. The Lake District lost over 500,000 trees apparently. The way the trees were laid out in the Tarn was dramatic. And of course it gave Jonathan (and me) something to climb on and go discovering. There is something deep in the human spirit that drives us to discover; sometimes that discovery goes smaller and smaller, and sometimes it goes bigger and bigger. As I get older I find that I will either do one or the other.

I’ve been setting myself a little test to make sure I take it all in. When we go out for a walk I try to make sure that I take as many small pictures as big ones. Get into the beauty of that little flower, or leaf, or insect, and at the same time realise how huge that sky is and how tall that tree is. Jonathan and Emily are naturals at this; one second they can be telling you about the shape of a cloud and the next showing you a newt in the water that they’ve just discovered. Emily even noticed that the ‘dust’ on the edge of the Tarn wasn’t dust at all – it was thousands of dead insects with their wings glistening in the sunlight.

The discovery hadn’t finished there though; we even managed to round the day off by discovering a little Italian Restaurant down a little alleyway in Bowness-on-Windermere (of all places).

I love days of discovery.