These photos come from a workshop I did with 6-8 year olds in a local school in June 2024
This quote from a fellow blogger struck me this morning
Man has all too quickly reclaimed the garden, the natural chaos is trimmed back. It’s neat, it’s tidy. It’s now very sellable. But to me it has now lost its magic.
His neighbour’s house was being tidied up after the neighbour had died to make it sellable because no one really wants a wildlife garden, even though we talk about making our gardens wildlife friendly we do more often than not mean it in a domesticated way.
It reminded me of an interpretation of the story of the Selkie I’d just read. The woman wants this wild man she had met on the beach for her own and so hides the selkie’s skin which tames him. She then isn’t so keen on him once he is tamed.
It also made me think of the children I worked with in June who really enjoyed their creative writing session once they got their heads round the idea that I didn’t need neat and tidy but wanted something wild and creative.
How often do we spend ages tidying ourselves up, making ourselves presentable, sorting out our natural chaos so we are liked by the world? Because that was what was happening with this house here, with the woman and the Selkie, with the children and their story telling; all were making it presentable to the world.
Too often we get taught as children to “pipe down”, to “stop messing about”, to “behave ourselves”. And so we learn that being wild is not really acceptable. So we try to make ourselves “sellable” and in doing so we lose the magic – the magic of ourselves, the magic of how we see the world, the magic of just being alive.
Gary goes on to say
Some called it overgrown, most called it wonderful. To me it was like a magical corner from a chapter in The Secret Garden. A place that made me smile.
So why don’t we stop trying to tidy ourselves up for a world, enter that place of Freedom, and allow our natural chaos, our wild, magical selves out. And maybe create a smile for other people as they enjoy us being our true selves.
Aspirational Adventures 