Before breakfast

A bright blue clematis stands proud from the stone wall, a pastel pink rose unfolds in the early-morning sun, it’s wafer thin, cup-shaped petals seem as delicate as a butterfly and as though they’ll blow away in a breeze. But they won’t; other buds will open and join the rose in a glorious, beautiful and deeply scented spectacle, so stunning I gasp. 

I turn and look across the lawn to see a mass of bees swarming and collecting pollen from the dark blue spires, standing upright from a lavender bush. Ornamental grasses and tall purple-headed verbena flutter in the gentle wind. Almost every other plant in the garden has changed overnight – bigger, more blossoms, grown taller, wider; none have stood still.

A dragon fly hovers over the pond, birdsong fills the air, insects dart around, some unseen, and a large seagull swoops low to check out the possibility of catching a fish for breakfast. He’s unlucky. The fish have got wise to his game: they take to the deep, dodging behind lily pots and water flora to be almost invisible. 

It’s five am, just after the sun has risen and I’m in my small garden where I can be found most mornings at this time of year. I wander to the stone table on our patio and sit. I’m lucky, I think, and turn my thoughts to the world’s unlucky, the dispossessed, those who have nothing and to their fellow travellers in misery, those fleeing from conflict, the hungry and thirsty, the persecuted, the poor, those affected by climate disaster. People who flee from certain death to find a better chance in life for themselves and their families. Those who have nothing.

One billion of the world’s population,10%, are migrants and move from one country to another in search of a better life?  It’s a basic human right as enshrined in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 10^th December 1948.

They need sympathy and help.