Retirement can bring challenges. You have worked a long and enriching life and when you reach that faithful age when it is time to put the pen (or gun or rolling pin or paintbrush, etc.) down, what do you pick up? How do you spend those hours long hours of the day and how to you continue to enrich your life ad the lives of those around you. For one 75-year-old man, the answer was easy, make a dragon.
John Brooker, 75, turned where so many turn in the face of retirement, to the garden. Gardening is a low impact exercise that brings you up close with the beauty of the world on a daily basis. While your kids have long grown up, with gardening there is always something that needs your care and attention. Gardening is suggested by many psychologists as one of the best hobbies to take up when starting retirement for this reason. It is a social hobby without relying on people, how many times have you heard someone talk to their flowers? Exactly.
However, John did it differently. He was not content pruning bushes and growing daisies. Instead, he set his sights on something much bigger, mammoth even, legendary you might say. John decided to turn one of his hedges, into a 150-foot dragon. Using all of his gardening know-how and some of his wife’s graphic design skills. John created a design for a dragon and got his shears to work.
John has been tending to this hedge and the rest of the garden for 13 years now and the dragon continues to grow in complexity. The dragon slayer has to tame the beast for a full day each week to keep it in tip-top condition and is loved by many in his town of the UK for the work that he does.
Have you plans for retirement? Have you looked down on the gardeners of the world for being too boring? Look again.
