The garden holds me. It runs wild this year, fuelled by curiosity and if I’m honest, a little weariness with the pressure of upkeep. Teasels have made a jungle in the veg patch, and a multitude of grasses sway and ripple in the heat. The wildness is intoxicating, though. Insects flit through, pausing to fill up on nectar. A gaggle of ladybirds pupated in their masses on the back wall and are currently finding new homes amongst the undergrowth. Rare hoverfly larvae made short work of the fir aphids that appeared, then decided to pupate under the stone slabs. I have never seen so many butterflies. And in those times where my brain is full, I sit here, as I do now, under a parasol or shaded by the gangly climbing rose, and just watch and exist alongside this riot of life.

At night, I come and wonder and gaze at stars, swooped low by bats, occasionally bumped in to by a huge, chunky moth, or catching the glimmer of ghost white wings in hedgerows. Our first poplar hawk moth arrived this year. Frogs rustle and plop in the darkness. The badger trundles through now and then. This little patch of earth, for this infinitesimally small time, shared by all the things that call it home. In that there is comfort.

Today, I’m feeling some sort of existential dread, and here I sit, rippling out waves of anxiety, and bit by bit, the garden softens me, transmutes those waves into something more gentle. It wraps itself around me, holding space, reminding me that we are all the same, and that deadlines, papers and chapters and the general rush of the final PhD year can be put aside for a moment. I watch the breeze rippling across the long, heat-faded grass, a cricket fizzing and rasping, somewhere beneath the stems.

Sometimes, of course, the anxiety hangs around. I try to accept, to flow with those tides, hormones and cycles, months and phases. And of course, try is the word. I don’t always succeed, but I try again, and again, and embrace the curiosity of it all, which in itself is freeing. I think letting go of the garden has helped, in some strange way. Leaving the grass to grow wild. Leaving the veg patch to be taken over by whatever decides to seed itself there. Watching ragwort grow through paving, and holly leaves falling into piles. The garden breathes out, free from pressure. And in that, it is thriving. Seeing the breadth of life that has decided to make it’s home next to ours, amongst this wildness and chaos, it’s taught me something. Something unformed, yet still powerful. To let go of so much control. To tread gentle paths through wildness. To sit and observe and trust that we know, somewhere deep down. We just have to create the space to listen.