The one about...Leaning into Spring's expansiveness

Back in the dark ages of the 1970s (quite literally, if you remember power cuts and the three day week), teachers could happily run with a child’s natural curiosity and set open-ended projects as valid educational experiences. My passion of the moment was wild flowers and plants, whilst my desk neighbours were big into beef cattle and rugby. (It was rural Wales, after all). I spent every spare minute for six weeks roaming the lanes and fields, collecting flowers, pressing them, sketching and photographing them on my Kodak Instamatic camera.

As well as the obvious benefits of being able to do independent research on something I loved I remember those weeks in Spring as being a golden time. Was it a case of looking back through rose-tinted spectacles or was something bigger at work there? I’m still a researcher and so I did what comes naturally and found out. It turns out I’m onto something.