The sky was not encouraging as I set off for meetings this morning:

In a way this image captured my feelings about my personal blog challenge. I started to fret about what I was going to write, and to wonder when I was going to fit in time to look and listen properly to the natural world around me. I grabbed a quick image of a rose at the station to give me something to fall back on….and then realised that I had had come very close to completely missing the point!

Some days it is simply easier than others to take time to breathe and appreciate our surroundings. That’s just life. If today is too busy, well so be it. It’s only a problem if EVERY day is too busy.

So after my meetings, I headed to Guildford and the Watts Gallery in Compton.  It’s a place I love, and one which makes best use of a really lovely setting.

I may not have consciously focussed on Compton as today’s place to engage with nature, but once there it was very obvious. The artist in residence, Andrew Kearney, describes his year’s work at the Gallery as a journey that was ‘an opportunity to reflect on the natural environment and on those elements outside human control that we tend to overlook in our everyday routines.’

His work is on show indoors and out and responds to the environment he found.

So actually a perfect contribution to my 30 Day, which sent me back to the gardens for the shapes and colours of late evening: