Nature and nurture

After a morning of being completely incapable of focusing my mind on anything I had to force myself out the door to go and photograph a community garden that our international primary school are helping to create along with a local primary, local college and the Gemeente (Council) in the Mariahoeve area of The Hague. Today was launch day and typically it was snowing and -1C but the volunteers were out in force preparing the area. My task was to document the area in it's "before" state and I will be going back periodically to take images as the work progresses. Children from the local school and ours came along to plant up seeds that they will take home and nurture before bringing them back ready to be planted out in April. What particularly touched me was the lovely interaction between the volunteers and kids, hopefully passing on a love of gardening. The contrast of the old man's hands and the young girl's as they press the earth on top of the seeds hopefully encapsulates this. As always, the photography brought me out of myself and brightened my outlook for the rest of the day, despite needing a good hour to thaw out.