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Gardening and consistency
I love the garden, but I, and I am quite giddy with delight as I say this, I have come to realise I am not a fan of the actual gardening. Ha! What a journey, to be able to speak a realisation about myself. What a tentative delight it is!It should come as no surprise that I’ve battled with this, coming from a large family of green-fingered garden geniuses, resplendent in their piles of vegetables and home-grown preserves, borders of jewel-like flowers growing happily to the sky. I have tried, I really have. I love the idea of gardening. I want to love it, I really do. I’ve even almost convinced myself, whilst putting endless seeds in the soil, watering that little bit of hope that dark, cold days will soon pass and shoots will spill forth from the ground. But no. Inevitably, hardly anything sprouts. The things that do get eaten immediately by supersnails (even super-hot chillies, which only serve to make the snails grow stronger and more filled with rage and teeth). If something progresses to getting actually planted in the ground, it will, by some miracle of nature, become either grass or a dandelion. No, I don’t know how, either.
So, the last few years, as I have played with the dawning realisation that this is just not for me, I’ve let the garden just grow by itself, madly, wildly, full of weeds and yes, full of grass, full of dandelions, full of THINGS. I’ve embraced this funny, rising feeling of joy and freedom, until it spills from my lips in a wild giggle, watching shieldbugs lay eggs on a huge rambling rose that’s twined itself up the holly tree and yelling I DON’T CARE and feeling all kinds of wonderful. Because not caring has given something to the wild. Nature holds me now. The garden is its own beast.
I don’t care that couch grass is taking over the driveway. I don’t care that teasels spring from cracks in the paving, making bare-legged wandering a veritable gauntlet. I don’t care that the same teasels have created a huge, towering field for themselves in what used to be the veg patch. I don’t care that dandelions run rampant and brambles wander enthusiastically around the perimeter, eyeing up the rest of the garden with pure intent. Occasionally we’ll get a little enthusiastic and hack a path so the postie can still get through to the letterbox without being absorbed into a particularly enthusiastic clump of crocosmia. But in true metaphoric style, letting it all go has exploded into more than we ever imagined. The new, wild friends who have moved in to live in this little patch of space with us have shown us that this earth really knows best. “Stop interfering, let us get on with it!” shout the spiders spinning silk between teasel heads. “Thanks for the flowers!” buzz the fluffy bees, sharing nectar with wasps, flies, hoverflies and moths. Voles speedrun through the undergrowth. Frogs rustle in patches of wilderness.
Year by year, things come and go and rise and fall. Last year was borage, this year is teasels. Last year was foxes, this year, badgers. Giant dragonflies pop in over the fence, flitting their diamond wings and glistening all sorts of metallic colours. It’s great. The house becomes more and more permeable with time. Attic bees. Bats. Birds. Mice in the walls. Squirrels in the eaves. Moss. Ivy trying its very best to enter the windows and come and live indoors, thank you very much. Spiders living their dramatic, leggy lives in dark corners, and come August and September, at speed across the living room floor.
Instead of gardening, I wander around and pick things from the hedge that look tasty. Huge blackberries (fighting the nettles to get to the best ones). Wild strawberries, hiding under leaves tumbling from stone walls, super sweet and shiny red. Rosehips from the aforementioned climber, the angriest plant in the garden, seemingly putting specific effort into spiking your skin wherever possible. Boundless oregano, self-seeded and abundant. This is what I like. Dipping in and out, sharing the harvest with our wild friends.
I wondered why gardening is so hard. Looking back over my years of failed attempts, it seems kind of obvious now. Gardening takes consistency. It takes sustained effort. It takes planning and willpower and doing things for no immediate reward. You are definitely in it for the long haul. A lot of work, for a distant, future reward. All of these things are the exact opposite of how my brain works. No wonder I’m tapping out.
The big thing was that I felt like I should like gardening. Thousands of people find solace, support, community, meaning in tending a garden. I know myself that spending time here is healing. But there is also pressure for me. I tried and tried, and when my anxiety got really bad, even waiting until dark to run out to quickly try and do something in the garden whilst no one else was out. But I didn’t get better at gardening. I didn’t suddenly find a seam of joy, or a sense of relaxation. I didn’t get de-stressed, I got more stressed. The garden got ‘messier’ and I got more and more overwhelmed. Why couldn’t I do this?
It all makes sense now, to this brain built for rummaging hedgerows in autumn for the best berries, not for tilling and caring for those berries in the preceding months. This brain built for variety, quick interest and a little chaos, not planting plans, waiting for things to grow, and then remembering to plant them in bigger pots. It’s just not me. Maybe one day in the future some miracle will descend upon me and I’ll gaze at the garden in a golden haze of understanding, the joy of plantsmanship suddenly realised, planting whole crops of broad beans that never get rust or destroyed by hungry molluscs. Maybe one day I’ll actually be able to grow one entire flower from a seed. Or even from a plug and grow. Here’s hoping.
But for now, I just scatter care to the wind. It’s one of the first things I’ve solidly learned about myself, and being able to speak it out is such a thrill. From decades of not really knowing who I am, to being able to say I don’t think this is for me. Yes, I’ll shove a garlic in the ground and be surprised by it again come summer solstice. I might fling some bee mix at a patch of earth, give it precisely one watering can and cross my fingers. I might snip a particularly enthusiastic bramble now and again, or get into a fight with the angry rose bush. But that’s about it for me. I’m happy with that.
Like I say, maybe it’ll change in the future. I’ve grown things before, in a rented house with lovely soil and a proper veg patch, and loved eating beetroot straight from the ground, growing a cabbage bigger than the sink and picking bowl after bowl of warm, ripe strawberries. Someone else had spent years improving the soil. Someone else planted the strawberry patch. A gardener was included with the rent to tidy up and sort the lawn. Left to myself, I fully imagine that huge lawn would have taken on a wild tinge, too. So we will see. For now, I’ll wander on into the wilderness, and see what next year holds.
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Wild winds
There’s an August storm whipping through the trees outside. Trunks bending, branches flailing wildly in the gales. The leaves are heavy, and the ground moves up and down with the gusts like waves. Plant pots tip and debris piles in corners. I leave it until the winds settle.
There are two small casualties of the storm, baby wood pigeons blown from the nest, sad little bodies in the rain, thin yellow feathers on cold skin. My heart hurts for them, and I carry them over the wall to a sheltered spot, scattering rose petals on their tiny wings. May they be used well, feeding new life, absorbed back into that interconnected web of which we all are part. A candle flickers for them now, as darkness falls. It is nature, and baby birds a precarious part of that, but we watched the parents pick twigs from our roof, spending time getting just the right ones, and I feel a wrench of sadness at the end of this nest for the year.
The wind is strong but warm, and runs through my hair like fingers when I turn my face to the gale. Usually I’d be up on the moors, running wild in the storm, but this year and the last I feel more of a pull to stay home. It is a quiet period for me, a conserving of energy, the slow times. It is what it is. Instead I read, and potter, and do some mundane household bits, whilst the rain batters the windows and the trees are shaped by wind-wraiths. There is a freshness to this wind, a clear smell, a cleansing. It wraps around the stone walls of the house, brushing away any lingering stagnancy, invigorating, clarifying. With our week away it seems all the cellar spiders in the world have moved in, and the house is expectant, cloying, waiting. It needs this movement, this autumn clean. I clean the inside, slowly, chaotically, opening windows to refresh stale air. The wind joins me, and together we revive these four stone walls.
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Pride, feelings and following bees
It’s been a hectic week. Now, here at the end of it, listening to the light patter of rain on the conservatory roof, I’m processing it all. That’s not to say it’s been a bad week. In fact, it’s been really enjoyable, just busy, and long, and a little overwhelming.I was always taught that pride comes before a fall. It’s weird how deeply those sayings can stick with us through life, negating any sense of achievement, instilling in us the belief that feeling good about things we’ve done is wrong, and we’d better be prepared for the ‘something bad’ that will inevitably follow. As part of this long journey of relearning, it’s affirming to feel pride in the things I’ve done. But at the same time, it’s also challenging, with a tinge of sadness and grief, too. But I’ve achieved some things this week so I’m tentatively expanding into that feeling of accomplishment, and starting to learn to let go of the underlying feeling of dread that it will all go wrong soon. It’s not bad to feel proud, and slowly, I allow myself a little smile of happiness, a little warmth kindled inside my soul.
The dry weather and flowering teasels have brought all sorts of wildlife into the garden for a drink of nectar. Voles rustle in the undergrowth, whilst huge butterflies and a rambling assortment of bees buzz happily between those spiky teasel heads, putting their long tongues into the flowers and getting confused when another bee wants to drink from the same place. I love them. I’ve spent hours just sitting in the sun, watching, feeling my heart soar and sharing the space with the beating thrum of life at the summer peak.
It’s a joy that is limitless. Watching a new butterfly flit into the garden, seeing a frog pop its head up from the depths of the pond, getting buzzed by bats at dusk. It’s hard to explain but my soul truly lifts in those moments. The feeling is intoxicating, the feeling of life, of some energy beating through the land, of the full tide of living, breathing, just existing swelling all around. I’m re-learning that it’s ok to lose myself in that overwhelming, full colour, neurodivergent soup of feeling and thoughts and swirling experience. There’s no ‘should‘ or ‘don’t‘ or ‘”stop saying wow!“‘. Some part of me is crumbling and softening, a little, and I am wide-eyed and wonderous at it all. I flung open the conservatory doors earlier and breathed in the petrichor of the grey morning, in a moment that was almost euphoric. Time and colour and smell and joy, just bursting in that one breath, rising from my feet to the top of my head and out, out into the universe. The prickles on my skin where raindrops patter on the rooftop, almost tickling, shivering through my veins. The shine of a leaf that brings glitter to my soul. Following bees around the garden, stopping where they stop, watching them feed and buzz and bumble and fuzz. A line of ants, triggering memories of sunny holidays, following them to a crack in the ground, intently focused.
It’s an overwhelming process, this letting go. I’ve heard of it as unmasking and I get that description, but I feel it’s something bigger, the understanding. That little jolt where it all makes sense, and the enormity of the road ahead. But in this there is joy, and peace, and the freedom now to follow the endless curiosity that didn’t have a voice before. There is pride, and a fierceness, and wonder at the depth of it all.
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Pink Seaweed and Exciting Finds
Wandering along the shoreline is one of my favourite pastimes. I was born at the edge of the Peak District, as far away from the crashing waves of the shoreline as possible in the UK. I’m not sure if that explains the feeling that pulls me to the sea, to the edge of this island, where the legends and tales are saltier, the winds a little wilder. My husband hails from the long coasts of Norfolk and regales me with tales of boats, bridges, coastal erosion and longshore drift. He talks of waves and tourists and the sea as a constant. It is another world to me, a child of peaks and plains. When we visit, we park up, eating chips in the car, watching the blink of ships miles out to sea in the inky blackness.
Now we live in Yorkshire, with wild moorland, rocks, peat and those liminal spaces, but again, far away from the coast. The occasions I get to travel to the beach are special, and I roll up my trousers and wander amongst the froth of breaking waves until my toes are numb and raw pink from the cold.
On the beach, I look for treasure. Sparkly sea glass, shiny shells, even a coin or two after a storm. Maybe even real treasure – eye to the ground, eyes open to the possibility of a doubloon or two sparkling under a pile of drying seaweed. Who knows?!
Anything can be treasure, though, on a beach. I love the different seaweeds, although am no naturalist and can never remember the names. The big horsetails, with their sturdy roots and giant fronds. Long, string-like pieces that whip back and forth in sea breeze. Familiar bladderwrack, interspersed with nameless chunks of yellow or lime green, slime, plastic, rope, and the occasional dead crab. The unmistakable tang of low tide.
Last visit I spent time spotting the most vibrant pink seaweeds, contrasting starkly with the dull brown lying along the tideline. Pink seaweed! Another piece, and another! I collected them in my hands, slimy and wet, and laid them out on a nearby rock. For me, that day, pink seaweed was the best treasure I could find.
My husband picked up an old pulley, washed up by strong winds and huge waves. Orange brown rust bloomed all over, tiny shells and stones sunk into the metal. We wondered where it came from – a ship, a small boat, part of a cargo? Was it broken and thrown into the sea somewhere miles from land? Was it lost by a local fisherman bringing in the catch? The pulley stained our hands orange and made rusty mess everywhere, but we still brought it home, to wonder over.
The coastline is wild in a different way. Finds can be from anywhere in the world transported by the currents. Shells and animals from deep below the waves, places humans haven’t yet discovered. A beach is a place of meeting, of the known and unknown, earth, water, air. A place of treasure, always.
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Borage
Borage
Borage loves to be in our garden. Blue and white and spikier than you’d expect, with little hairs glowing white in sunlight and bees bumbling around all day. It self-seeds with abandon, covering what was once the veg patch, and is now the borage patch. I sit in a corner and watch things flying in and out for hours, sipping a cup of tea, watching the sun fade away to shadow and butterflies going to bed, making way for the night-flying moths. Frogs underneath, snails sliming their way around the bottom, deterred by the spiny hairs. Bees, of course – a variety of bumbles, then honeybees. Wasps, hoverflies, smaller flies that I don’t know the names of. A small patch, in the grand scheme of things, but layers and layers of life, of beauty, of gentle peace.
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Early signs of Spring
It’s March now, somewhat unbelievably. 2022 seems to have sped by so quickly, January and February feel so distant, like I missed them somehow. It’s been a quiet time, hiding from the news, watching and waiting and trying to make some sense of it all, and all that has happened in the last few years.
Against this backdrop of big, unsettling thoughts, I can notice our little garden and the changes that emerge. The light still returns, the shoots still emerge, the world still spins on and on. And in that there is comfort, for me at least.
Equinox is approaching, finally that tip into the lighter half of the year. Impatient, I see pictures from those further South, of bulbs flowering and finishing before ours are even above the soil. I know, though, that soon the leaves will bud and the insects will return. The early signs of spring are showing – slowly now, but I can’t wait for that heady rush when the season tumbles into life, changing day by day, with vibrance and energy and that riot of life.
Life in the pond
In the pond, leaves are growing and ripples start to twitch the surface, evidence of movement in the mud underneath. Yesterday, a frog popped its head above the surface for a few seconds, caught in a sunbeam. I felt a rush of relief that they have survived the winter. I check my Biotime diary – this time in 2020 there was spawn in the pond. Things are a little later this year, for sure.
The pond is overgrown, roots and duckweed all tangled together in clumps. Leaves from the holly tree above have fallen in copious amounts over winter. Now the frogs are up and about, I will wait for a warm day to clear it out and tidy up a little, before spawning. I usually find a few grumpy frogs still hiding in the mud at the bottom.
Along with the mud, they spend a few moments in a bucket, before mud, plus frogs, are tipped back in. It’s good to keep a nice layer at the bottom for them to hide in, and to keep a good dose of microbes there. The pond has established over a few years now, with clear water and healthy plants. I don’t want to clear all of that away, just give the inhabitants a little more room to move.
Every year I put a few handfuls of barley straw in a bit of chicken wire. As the straw rots it keeps the water clear (through some magic of science!) and provides a place for snails, larvae and the occasional frog to hide in.
Bulbs and birds
On Christmas Eve we planted bulbs in the lawn – crocuses and tulips – and they are pushing up through the moss now. At one side the crocuses are flowering, nestled underneath the Birch, tiny happy colours hinting at what’s to come. The snowdrops have finished for the year and daffodils are waiting for that perfect time to pop into bloom – not just yet, they say.
I feel that a little myself. That waiting, through the winter. It’s not time for action, just yet. Nurture those seeds planted, physically and mentally, in this world and in others. I always feel a disconnect with the whole ‘new year’ push. In the dead of winter, it is time to reflect, to hibernate a little. I used to push against this, but falling back into the rhythm of the seasons over the years has helped me to go with the tide some more. It’s ok to slow, to wait out the dark. We are still animals, part of that huge, glorious interconnected web. We still feel the pull of the earth.
Back in the garden, the birds are busy singing for mates, gathering twigs, filling up on seed before the still-cold nights. The hedgehog has happily returned, wandering past our wildlife camera in the dead of night, snuffling for nourishment after waking from a long sleep. It’s a noticeable shift – something has changed. That rising anticipation for warmer days and the sumptuous joy of those long, light nights. I know soon that the bees will return – I miss their background hum during winter.
We’ve planted our first seeds in a propagator – it’s our first year of having one and wow! The difference! In a few days, shoots were exploding with life. I’ll write a post about the propagator in the future. It’s brilliant so far. I worry for the potting on and transferring of those small plants to outdoor life, but it will happen as it will – I’m sure we will manage.
As the light returns, I feel myself starting to wake a little more with the longer days. Planting, moving, creativity.
A few sparks signalling a shift in me, too.
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Snowdrops and the return of Spring
Amidst the wild winds of Storm Malik this weekend, I glanced out of the window to see the first little snowdrops of the season dancing their heads in the gales. Small delicate white petals nodding this way and that as the wind whipped over the low stone wall beside them.
Amidst the storm, a reminder that soon the days will lengthen, the sun will warm us, the endless UK grey will give way to bluer skies and louder birdsong. I do not mind so much the days before winter solstice. The darkening and quieting of all, as we settle down to winter. It is the drawn out waiting of January, February and into March – that all pervading greyness, the damp cold, the washed out colours and brown twiggy borders. The trees that seem to take forever to bud, the waiting, waiting for those promised spring days that are always just around the corner. My mood settles with the grey. That something just out of reach.
I am impatient, as always. I want summer, with the heat and 11pm light and heady scents of honeysuckle in the dusk. I thrive with that rush of energy. My soul stretches out to fill those long, bright days. Here, still in winter, I feel small, drab, as if those days will never come. But they will, I know, and even now signs of change are popping up, however small.
The snowdrops are accompanied by the sun peeking back over the top of the valley in mid-January, shining into the windows to the back of the house, even just for a few minutes each day. I rush upstairs and throw the windows open, close my eyes and bask my face in the weak rays, the pale golden light.
Bulbs planted in Autumn begin to poke tentative leaves above ground – tulips, daffodils, crocuses – bringing the promise of colour and flower and those insects that love to feed on their pollen.
I miss the busy buzz of bees in the background, that soundtrack of spring and summer. Soon the tree bees will return (hopefully) to the attic, buzzing around the stone roof, whizzing around the garden, mating in piles of legs, wings and fuzz.
It is time, too, to begin to move myself. It is all too easy to sink into stasis when everything around you is deep in winter slumber. Although yes, stasis is needed. Winter of the soul. Balance in all, the ever-turning spiral. Now, along with the slowly awakening land, it is time for me to awaken, too. To fall back in love with the area I live in. To take those little sparks of energy, when they appear, and direct them into a life, into enjoyment, laying bases for things to come. Like the turn of the earth, to wax and wane with the seasons.
Now the snowdrops are here, spring will turn ever quicker, a reminder that even when all seems silent on the surface, inside little bulbs life is continuing to thrive. Even in the frozen dead of winter, deep down under the soil, plants and animals still feel the change of the days and ready themselves. I hope I can do the same.
With that, I re-fill my mug with tea and pull on an old jumper. I head outside, in search of more signs of spring.
