The challenge set by Kim is to write a poem about a garden. It can be a real garden (yours or someone else’s), a fantasy garden, a fictional garden, such as The Secret Garden, the garden of live flowers in Through the Looking Glass or the garden in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, a biblical or historical garden, for example the Garden of Eden or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. All you have to do is take us there – and you don’t have to buy it!
I’m going with a Haibun because it suits my material.
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Eight days we walked and talked across this Celtic land. We three. We three and a dog. Eight days we strolled for the Bees. Eight days in a Beeline. Eight days a week! A human beeline making an observation. Gardens did we see a plenty. Herbs and botanical wonders, arboretum and wild flowers creating their own wilderness displays. Mosses and ferns and lichens in the gardens of life, wild and uninhibited you would think. But there is potential danger everywhere to the gardens and to the bees. To nature itself. Neonicotinoids and glyphosates. High yields. Pursuit of profits. Aggro-chemical company concerns. But are they concerned with what is true?
I want to stay here
with natures organic way
in johnny’s garden
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Let’s Make Beeline was a charitable event involving a walk via a number of Bee friendly Gardens by a small group of folk ( Your Author included) and a Collie dog in the not too distant past.
You can read all about our adventures and see some lovely garden photos too at the blog linked.
Feature Photo by Henry Diltz
Left to right: Peter Sellers, Johnny and Stephen Stills at Elstead in Surrey.
Bees is just of the many things we need to concern ourselves with… love the way to show support…
Sorry for the delay in responding…internet issues and workload combined to stifle me…Thanks for dropping by Bjorn. You’re a steady eddie 😉
That’s a very cool way of walking seeking bees.
Thanks Brian and apologies for the delay. See above 😉 It was a very cool thing to do and it has been sending out gentle ripples into the pond ever since.
What a fabulous idea. I would love to walk a bee line.
Then I encourage you to do so. Anyone can string together a series of 10km walks or even just the one. One of the next parts of the project is to come up with guided walk-book for the ones we did and encourage other folk to add their own to the website as we go.
It sounds like it would be a beautiful book.
I like the way you explained the issues in your write up and made use of just “organic” to make the wonderfully striking contrast in your haiku. A well written haibun in concern with endangering flora and fauna, on a broader scale 🙂
Thanks for your positive thoughts.
love the meandering garden walk and the opening lines especially. If only we could just enjoy the long walks without heed for an environment we have all destroyed one way or another
I do enjoy my walks always even though I am mindful of the ‘situation’ with regards to the climate but I guess this walk was more than just a walk. This was filled with agenda 😉
Beautifully written. And good on you or doing something for the bees. I think it’s vitally important that we all do what we can.
Thank You. Glad you liked it. Of course the Bees need as much help as they can get. Buzz buzz.
I really enjoyed your haibun, Paul, for many reasons: the Celtic background; the fact that you were three humans and a dog on an eight-day mission; the ecological importance of bees; and the different types of garden with mosses, ferns and lichens – I love those natural plants and, my favourites, trees!
I’ve just got back from a short trip to Wroclaw in Poland, where we visited a botanical garden that is cared for so tenderly and wonderfully by its gardeners. It’s in a city, there is no rubbish, everything is well labelled, pruned, tended and there is no vandalism. And, like the city, there are gnomes, statues and carvings throughout.
Where I live in Norfolk, we have a local garden with an arboretum and a fantastic display of rhododendrons in the spring – in Poland the rhododendrons already have buds on them!
So happy you enjoyed my Haibun Kim and your Polish trip sounds wonderful. Gardens everywhere, especially cities, are what is required to help the bees flourish again. Fingers crossed.
I love the nature’s walk, my favorite thing to do during weekends when the weather is not too cold. Thanks for joining us Paul ~
No worries Grace