Making time for me…

| Gary Webb

It’s been a little while since I put some time aside to write specifically for my blog but I have, just like those little buzzy things in the garden, been a very busy bee of late. Today though, for the summer solstice, I’d planned to spend a much calmer day, mostly by myself doing whatever felt right – even if that ended up being nothing at all.

Heading into 2023, I somehow knew it would be a challenging year as I continued to establish in a working role that for me, was very different to anything I’d done previously – in some respects it felt as though I’d started a second career. As the year would progress, I knew I’d need to find time that I could call my own where I could think, read, write or do whatever – you’ve probably worked out that it turned into a writing kind of day!

Defining my own style hasn’t been an easy process I have to say, and I’m sure many would quickly say I’ve some way yet to go. But if you’ll allow me a little self criticism, I’m first to admit that frustratingly, I often get bogged down in detail, and all too often

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Mowing Past

| Gary Webb

As the grass cutting season picks up pace, I’ve found myself contemplating my relationship with lawn-grass, and after spending so many days of my life being paid to cut it, I have to say I’m quite torn – maybe I’ve had my fill. In fact, if I had a delete button for the lawn in my back garden, despite the beautiful green look it presents, I might well choose to press it and do away with the lawn completely. For me then, might my home lawn mowing days be nearing their end?

Perfect Partners

Being around the middle of May, the grass growing season is racing away with itself, and so grass cutting of course is quite topical. Verges along roads and garden lawns have moved in just a few short weeks from being chilled-out to a state of relentless growth, and the

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Buds to Berries – A Handsome Hawthorn

| Gary Webb
Fresh new year shoots.

Out of cold grey metal-hardened bark, the softest greenest shoots miraculously appear each spring. Keen new growth for a new season appears from tangled stand alone trees, or from individuals intertwined within field hedgerow communities.

Wire thin, pliable and verdant stems along with tiny fan shaped leaves build and stretch themselves towards the light. As growing days pass,

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An Old Magnolia Flower

| Gary Webb

It was an arboretum day filled with the brightest sunshine that beamed down between dense, top-lit clouds. To my foreground amongst grassy blades clothing two falling lawns, dozens of grape hyacinths were enjoying their moment, each with clusters of flowers no bigger than my thumb nail and shaded top to bottom with the lightest powder blue almost to black.

The Japanese style resting house under whose roof I sat, looked out over those flowers and a larger expanse of mown lawn that continued to fall gently away, eventually connecting to a wide and spectacular

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The last difficult “goodbye”.

| Gary Webb

Describe the last difficult “goodbye” you said.

The last difficult goodbye was just like the one before, and the one before that: quick, cheery, almost effortless. Words spoken at my last goodbye rolled off my tongue because they had to, and that’s taken years of practice.

Going back a few years, I would most often whisper the words “bye for now,” which somehow seemed softer and less permanent, but I really knew that anything I said wouldn’t erase the twelve sleeps that would pass before we could be together again. So with a sinking chest and

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Respite.

| Gary Webb

It was the beach that drew us on a particular Thursday, whilst staying at Grandma’s house during school’s half term break. A trip out to keep two energetic boys occupied, to busy their minds, to stretch their legs, and to offer respite. Just a week before their Granda had passed away, an immense loss that they, all of us in fact, were still processing. Yet there they were, immersed in a week which on the surface looked like just another holiday week staying over at their grandparent’s house. Except that it wasn’t a normal week at all.

In the background adults were grieving, tearing up at the oddest of moments, and pausing mid conversation, falling deep into thought. We were being especially strong for the boys though,

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Just a Park?

| Gary Webb

A little while ago whilst staying away from home, and with a need for some fresh air, I carried myself and the little ones off to Herrington Park, Sunderland. On the surface, I simply wanted to experience some of the bracing wind, some casual walking and, I hoped, some late February sunshine. There was also an ulterior motive to get the kids away from their screens and outdoors for a while.

Landscaped over twenty years ago, Herrington Park features machine-sculpted hills and hollows and is dressed with hedgerows, trees and shrub-filled thickets. These plantations are busy and mature, now bringing life to the park with

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A Boathouse at Belton

| Gary Webb
©️Gary Webb 2023

Stepping carefully through frozen leaves so not to squish snowdrops, I ventured through vegetation to the river’s edge until a boathouse appeared across the water. I merely sought another perspective and to understand why such a boathouse there, and built in such an unusual way?

Visible mostly by the crisp outlines of a tiled roof perched upon hefty, stripped bark pillars, the recently restored boathouse was a subtle,

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To the Park

| Gary Webb

It was good to be there, enjoying the winter glow, and to be amongst the cooing, spilling, driving noise. Refreshing it was to be on my time and be out amongst people who also chose that park, that day. I drew comfort from seeing folks like me, and not like me, strolling and wheeling between the trees, benches, bins.

Cold may have tickled my exposed neck but the sun’s glow washed my face with warmth, and the chilly metal park bench grounded me to that place. Under the lumpy holly oak I sat with the brightest sun blaring through its low swaying branches, light flashing across waves of that choppy pond, transforming waterfowl into silhouettes.

Geese honked and gulls flapped wildly into the air towards anyone likely to scatter food, hoping morsels would fall within striking distance. At my feet speculative pigeons trod a winding route, also hoping for free food to arrive, styling it away when nothing appeared.

Noise from bustling nearby traffic was drowned, literally, by thick ribbons of water rising and falling from six fountains in the pond, each descending stream creating a disk of white water turbulence birds wisely avoided. Sights, smells, sounds; the whole embracing scene wrapped around me.

As I record those moments to read again, I know that I can be carried there again quicker than a glint on that water. When days to come grip me indoors or in traffic, these memories will loosen the grasp and revive me. ‘Twas a rest day, a peace day, a sit in the sun and take it all in day and you, like I can hold days like those in your heart.