The Diocese of Salisbury

We moved home several times during my husband’s career. Arriving at each new home we took note of the maxim that it is best to live with a garden for a year before making changes; that way new surprise plants make their appearance.
 
We have lived in our current home for 27 years, but it was 15 years before we found our most cherished wildflowers!
Like the previous owners, we regularly mowed the grass. Then we decided, for environmental reasons and to reduce the mowing effort, that we would allow most to become meadow grass with a network of paths mown through. That year we found one example of each of the wild orchids in the photographs. In the intervening years, the numbers have increased. Each June it is our joy to search for orchids. The one which promotes most awe and wonder in me, is the Bee Orchid. It is one of nature’s best mimics; to a male bee, the flower’s velvety lip looks, feels, and smells like a female bee. Males try to mate with it, thus pollinating the flower.
 
Although bee orchids reflect the image of a bee, each individual flower is unique. In a deeper sense, we ourselves and the children we teach, are made in the image of God and yet unique and special in his sight.
 
One of the rewarding aspects of living in the same diocese for 27 years is that through chance meetings with parents of former pupils, I discover what young people do with their lives after school. It is such a privilege to glimpse how seeds sown and nurtured in school come into blossom. As with plants in a garden, future careers are sometimes predictable and at other times totally unexpected, yet all valued.