A Great Picnic but Our Tree is Dying...........

Yesterday was a glorious late Summer's day for the Annual Buddhist Picnic and sixteen of us travelled from all across the island to join up for this special event. It was a great chance to catch up with friends from the other Buddhist groups on the Isle of Wight and find out what they had been up to. The aftermath of one generous charitable act was all too obvious with Angie's "new haircut". Last month she "Braved the Shave" to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support, as you can see from the photo it's still quite short!

This was the eighteenth year we've held the event so it's become a bit of a local tradition. Some of us got there early and strung a few prayer flags to let people know where we were.

But as you can see from this shot and the one below we were saddened to see that the small oak tree that marks our picnic spot is in very poor health with only a very few leaves and with most of the branches dead and dried out. One possible explanation is that two years ago the Duver was flooded and as it is a low lying coastal sand spit (forming one side of Bembridge harbour) salt water mixed with the flooding and it is this that has damaged the tree. So that's the Buddhist bit - impermanence...............

Talking of dying please rest assured that nothing was hurt in the flying of the boomerang below except the egos of those who failed to get it to come back (that was everyone, and it's another Buddhist lesson - the ego bit).