Inspired by Nature is a themed Croak to entertain you with some of our favourite artwork based on nature and the outdoors. We hope it will stimulate you to get creative and produce something yourself. If you do and would like to share them with us, please post them on our Facebook page, Twitter account, or email us at info@froglife.org
This months feature has been written by the poet Keely Mills who worked with Rebecca Neal our Conservation Youth Worker on the Peterborough Green Pathways project, funded by BBC Children in Need.
Digging potatoes and holding frogs
None of us say much,
Questions hang like spider webs in the air,
they can’t catch the answers though.
Just a huh or a maybe.
Its an uncomfortable mood
& it seeps into every move we each make.
Even the fire we light, can’t stay aflame.
We split off, each of us an ember.
I am not sure that it will change.
Nature overtakes any doubt.
Within minutes, we are all digging potatoes.
We take it in turns to collect and wash them.
Back together again.
Choosing which of them we will take.
As if it were ready now, the fire is lit.
It reaches the sky and feeds off our new warmth.
We share cooking duties, stories about school.
Some of us hold tiny frogs,
Make badges and boil a kettle.
After we have eaten.
And the taxi has been called.
Each of us hold onto this green feeling for as long as we can.
Now more than ever, I understand that a bad start,
can be mended with dirt, love and growing.
By Keely Mills
July 2015