Today we celebrated the traditional Celtic festival, Imbolc. In the Celtic seasonal calendar, Imbolc signals the beginnings of spring and the stirrings of new life. And today really felt spring-like with the sun brightly shining, fresh new growth around us, snowdrops and hellebores flowering.

Imbolc is traditionally a fire festival so first we built a fire to enjoy our celebrations around.

There are lots of traditional things done at Imbolc including planting seeds, making goddess dolls and crosses, eating seedy bread, burning fires and candles. It was also originally a time for natural 'Spring Cleaning' - clearing out the old and making space for new beginnings. So we enjoyed a fun little wish-making session. We all took a piece of wood and wrote a wish, an idea or new plan for the future on them. Then we put them in the fire to burn and make our wishes.

And of course we had a cook up! Shane cooked a fantastic vegan curry stew and Siobhan brought nan bread to share.

We also had our favourite vegan chocolate bananas as desert!

As Imbolc is traditionally a fire festival, we also had some sparklers to finish off our celebration!

One of the best things about our fire sessions is that we get a chance to chat as a group. Group members took turns round the fire circle to name one positive thing they take from our cook-up celebrations. Here's some of our answers:

Jo: Being with good company.

Siobhan: Feeling spiritual in mother nature.

Nigel: If we had to rebuild a new civilisation we would have the knowledge and skills to do so. Fire building... cooking...

Shane: I don't have to cook when I get home... Also achieving wonderful things in our allotment family.

Ruth: Community.

Katy: I don't have to do any work ;-)

Sam: Pleasurable proximity.

What a fantastic celebration today. Imbolc wishes to all.