A carpet of pink Camelia flowers
Posted on by Debbie

In the Pink for #PastSquare!

Past Square – Day #26

Dogwood trees

As I ride my bike around our pretty little town of Tumbarumba, I can’t help but notice the amazing array of colours in the gardens.

Spring is here in all its glory and with recent rain and warmish temperatures, everything is coming alive. Which is just as well as the local Garden Club is holding their annual Spring Garden Festival this coming weekend.

One of my favourite trees at the moment, are the dogwoods, both the pink and white varieties. When I was made redundant back in 2016, my staff bought me a Cloud 9 dogwood tree as a parting gift.

They all trooped up to my place, with the tree, and our horticulture teacher chose the most suitable spot to plant it. We all ceremoniously dug a hole and planted the tree together. We actually took it in turns to dig, as they were all keen to be involved. It was very special!

We were a very tight knit little group, who had all been made redundant together and had been through a lot working in a challenging environment of a Men’s Minimum Security Correctional Centre. We’d done some great work together over the past few decades and felt the pain of not being valued enough to keep on. It was a time of grieving but now all these years later I’m fine and dandy!!

Planting my work tree gift
Planting my work tree gift – my lovely staff from a past life.

It’s not a grave we’re digging, I promise, although symbolically it was the death of our jobs!!!

The tree is still growing after a few scares last summer, but it will be quite some time before it starts to flower, and it will have white flowers not pink. Now every time I see a dogwood, I think of my special gift and look forward to the day it will flower.

Dogwood
Dogwood

I called in to see a friend earlier today and couldn’t help but be impressed with her gorgeous trees, and asked if I could take some photos of them. I’m sharing them with you as they are too lovely to keep to myself!

Dogwood flowers
Dogwood flowers

Becky has her Squares challenge going again for the month of October, where we can share any photo as long as it’s square, on the theme of Past something – these are some of the past themes for squares, so there’s lots of choice! Today I chose the past square theme of In the Pink.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is word-art.jpeg
Past themes for Squares

I’ve not been very good at joining this month, I keep meaning to join in but get distracted quite easily. I was actually gardening today, weeding and being useful so thought it the perfect time to share the pink dogwoods.

Hope all is well in your world.

Deb 🙂

All my #pastsquare posts can be found here

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Debbie - mother of a 40 year old

Deb is a young-at-heart & active 60+ blogger/retiree, after being made redundant from her 22-year career managing education programs in a men’s correctional centre (jail). She now spends her time reading, blogging, riding her ebike and travelling. Deb was awarded a Bravery Award from the Queen when she was 17 after a tragic accident – a definite life changing moment! She is married with 3 grown-up daughters & has 4 grandchildren. You can read more of Deb’s story here

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13 Replies to “In the Pink for #PastSquare!”

  2. Gorgeous photos. Being made redundant is absolutely not fun. My husband exited the same way and I wrote a post called Tumultuous Tuesday about the effect it had in our lives. Glad you were able to find closure and move on. Take care. Bernie

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    1. Thanks BernieLynne, it was a difficult time but I’m over it now and have moved on. The Dogwood flowers always remind me of this thoughtful gesture from my staff. I’ll look for your post and have a read.

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  4. oh my must have been such a difficult time – so glad you were able to support each other through it and what a fabulous positive thing has come out of it. A lovely tree as are your friend’s trees and also your friendships

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. Thanks so much Debbie, what a lovely comment. It started as a post about the pink dogwoods but ended up being about friendship and a time in my life that was a bit shit!!

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