100/100/100: Days 106-110

On May 1st I started a hundred day challenge to write a hundred posts each of exactly a hundred words. I completed it, but by then it had become a habit! I shared the first five,  now here are the next:

Day 106
A wild flower garden! A wonderful idea, leave nature to do its thing, allow bees to bumble, butterflies to dip here and there, so-called weeds to flower… a marvellous idea, marvellous for not very good gardeners struggling to keep their patch in order!
The reality is it looks a mess; there are loads of anonymous weeds, none bearing flowers, dandelions are flourishing but even they have no sunny faces to attract the insects.
It’s quite disheartening. Today we attacked the mighty brambles, stems an inch thick, trying our best.
The only delight is that we have a big fat toad.

Day 107
How nice to have the window open and the cool night air slipping in. The village outside is silent, just the faint hum of a disappearing aeroplane but no sound of distant traffic, not the rattle and mournful hoot of a train heading southwest.
There’s no breath of wind, only the slightest movement of a gentle zephyr. Zephyrus was the Greek god of the west wind, so being in the west it’s most apt. He’s the fructifying wind, appropriate for our fruitful orchards, and a belated messenger of spring. The most gentle of winds, he lived in a Thracian cave.

Day 108
Our attempt to have afternoon tea at a different place was thwarted – we hadn’t booked! I rang to check there were tables, but didn’t check on the availability of the afternoon tea! We could have had a cream tea but they would have had to defrost the scones. We settled for three cakes and two sandwiches, tea and a cold drink.
It was ok. However, I do wish they charged a little more for the tea and gave us a decent brew, instead of the insipid tasteless tea, and a teabag with which the predominant taste was bag, not tea.

Day 109
Far away women and girls – of all ages are in danger and I reflect on how lucky I’ve been in my life. I’ve been lucky my parents believed anything and everything was possible for me, the fact I was a girl was never even mentioned, I was a person.
I was lucky I was born in a city where girls’ education and girls’ possibilities were not limited.
I was lucky that I went to a polytechnic where I was me, not a female.
I have been so lucky, and I grieve that Afghan women are being denied my chances.

Day 110
Down in the green ditch, lush knee high grass rippling damply round my legs, I asked my little self a serious question. I already knew the answer, aged seven, or maybe younger, I wondered if there really were fairies. I’d continued to hope, looking for them for a while, but now, sadly, I admitted fairies weren’t real.
Had I been in the ditch, bushes towering overhead questing after these elusive, magical beings? I wasn’t upset, more accepting what I already knew but vainly hoped was not true.
Around this time I realised that neither was there such thing as god.