St Albans is a wonderful place to live and to grow, but like many places, plant a shrub and then neglect it and – before you know it - the shrub is rampant and the garden path has disappeared.

It will only reappear again after hours of cutting back, shredding and filling numerous recycling bags. I know because I have just spent the best part of two days cutting back bushes and shrubs and being told, “And don't cut off next year's flowers from the forsythia!”

Well, the choice is finding the path again in time for the
winter or keeping next Spring's forsythia flowers.  And I had forgotten how many aches and pains come with ladders, saws and secateurs.  

We are now coming to the end of this year's Season of Creation running from 1 September to 4 October. As an introduction at the beginning of this Season, Nicholas Holtam, Bishop of Salisbury said: “Celebrating Creationtide marks a
shift in the Christian understanding of our relationship to creation under God.

"The consequences of teaching over recent centuries that humanity has been given domination over creation are clear in the complex environmental crises we now face. It is important that Christians rediscover older traditions of a godly
relationship of humanity to the wider created order.”

Creation really is beautiful, but like my garden shrubs and bushes, cannot be abused and forgotten about – we all have responsibilities to protect Creation and not steal the future from succeeding generations.