Thursday 16 August 2012

On Gardening

So, we know I'm trying to become a gardener (says so just up there), but now we also know my garden looks like this. Clearly I am a bit resistant to actual gardening. I could spin you a web of time and non-childproof garden features and weather and unfurl at your feet my well-rehearsed Things To Do scroll, but I find time to make name signs (look right), so why not be out in the garden I want to learn from and grow with? Why not be physical and earthy in the way I wish to be? Too much death, that's why.

If you've been with me a little while, you'll know that my husband, Thomas, died six months ago. And six months, in a soul-deep bereavement, is just a wink of Kali's long-lashed eye. For half a year I have been creating a good home for my girl, making art for people I know and people I will never meet, writing stories and poems and blog posts, growing in many directions and watching Pickle grow with stellar speed. I have been gathering beautiful things for our house. I have been acquiring some first-shoot skill on the harmonica and taking us on adventures near and far.

I have been doing. I have not been undoing.

I have managed some sorting of Thomas's things, but mostly when they can go to someone who loved him to use. (Pickle now wears his favourite T-shirts as nighties, which breaks and gladdens my heart.) I have made changes around the house, but mostly in ways Thomas would have appreciated. I have been bold and brave and bloody amazing in my acceptance of his death, and yet, from the corner of my dream eye, I glimpse a waiting place... waiting for my husband to come home, to heal my heart as I could not heal his, and witness the capering wonder that is our girl. And perhaps the garden has become that waiting place.

How can I, then, when I have lost so much and leaned with such abandon on the nature around me, take a blade to Thomas's garden? I have loved the wild chaos of it; rested in its presence. I have been reassured by its unequivocal assertion of life. And I have only just started to believe that this could really be my garden and not me hacking ignorantly at a bounty which also waits for Thomas's care.


But. And it's a big butt. He is not coming home. The garden is now mine. Or, to borrow wisdom from Australian Aboriginal people, it is now I who belongs to this garden. Pickle makes her own explorations of it and celebrates every flat surface with chalk, but if this land will be anything other than an unweeded wilderness, it is me who must make the change. It is me who must kill and clear and pull and slice and manipulate. I'm finding it a challenge to summon the ruthless confidence in my decisions necessary for gardening. I am loving the soil on my hands, but not the blood. Dandelion blood sticks a long time. I'm just not a Conquistador at heart. I'd be a rubbish Crusader. I have no missionary zeal to persuade the fern which almost blocks passage up the steps that, on balance, it is better for it to die, or at least be very much maimed and constrained. Who am I to make such judgements of this land which I hold to be older, richer, wiser and stronger than this person-self can ever hope to be? Who am I?

Mulling on this as I winced my way along the hedge with loppers, one eye out for nests to arrest my anti-progress, it occurred to me that I have none of this angst when sculpting. I take a piece of stone, older than the earth from which the hedge grows, and I scrape and bore and riffle away untroubled by the dust to dust falling all around me. I feel creative, as if I am transmuting a stone created by a thousand influences into one created by a singular, more intentional, influence. That feels fine. That feels good, an honouring of the stone itself.

The difference is that I can experience, with a little imagination and a little opening of my soul, how it is to have one's branches cut or to be pulled up at the roots, but my empathy with my sculpting stone is more cerebral; less felt. So, the difference is that it hurts me  more to cut green than to cut stone. Ah. And I thought this was about my great heartfulness. Ha ha.

Still I am left with the question of how manage this piece of land without feeling like (or being) a little copy of the imperialist patriarchy I am, unavoidably, a product of. I answer myself with semantics:

I will not 'manage' this land. I am not the boss of it. I come as a student; as an apprentice and as a child.
I will nurture this land as a parent nurtures a child by discouraging damage and encouraging nutrition.
I will tend this land as a nurse tends a patient by removing bacteria and offering love.
I will place all my senses at the service of this land so I can understand when I am getting it wrong and see the path to getting it right.

I hope these words will take root as I progress. And I hope it will be progress in the old-fashioned sense of making-things-better.

As an antidote to my blundering blather I leave you with Pickle in my parents' well-tended garden, happily watering the plants moments after rain. She watered the puddles, too, to watch the circles. Sometimes the wonder really is in the doing and there is a joy I could never think my way to.


15 comments:

  1. Dearest fledgling gardener,
    This is not a summer to inspire gardening, as anyone with a garden will tell you ( grieving and coping aside, you incredible woman). It is a summer to get wet up to your thighs, to look upon the greenery and remember why England is green. Apparently this endless wet weather is "good for bracken,grass and slugs". Hooray for them then, it is their year.It is the first year I have ever abandoned my veg garden, finally succumbing to weeds, leaving the slugs to multiply on my poor half grown veg.I have decided to officially declare it abandoned for this year to rid myself of the guilt that goes with a wild garden. Imagine, guilt free gardeners that we are watching our space to get to know it in its wild human-free state, a permaculture exercise, a mental meditation on becoming.Dearest Lunar when you feel the time is right, maybe when spring comes around again, you can choose from a land army awaiting a call to brambles to help you make it your garden if you so wish.There are many of us out here, and anyway it will be a good excuse not to start sorting out our own.For now, gather strength and eat jaffa cakes and in creative moments imagine a space you would like to be in.xxxx muchess love

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  2. Rachel, you raise a smile and a tear. I may call on my land army. It's good to know I have one. Imagine if nations had land armies instead of military ones. I will keep doing little bits, despite the adverse conditions. Perhaps trimming the brambles back from the windows would be a good next step - at least keep them outside! Much love to you too. My cooking is only a couple of steps ahead of my gardening (although a lot less sluggy, I am pleased to say), but when I'm feeling more confident with that I would like to feed your beautiful little family. xx

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  3. Chagford Land Army at your service.I would love to have a slug free munch with you sometime.Daisy and I have perfected a good cake so we could start with that! xx

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  4. Hi Lunar,'incredible woman'...yes!!:) I've sneaked a peak at your blog through a facebook sharing of it...it's/you are very beautiful and inspiring. And it's really helpful for someone to convey the sort of stuff that life is really about in the poetic way you do. So, as a gardener, I think you have a gift there with that garden..it's a metaphor that will help you go through the grieving processes. I'm sure you will work out how to give yourself and the garden what is needed so that in time you'll have a little sanctuary that you can better face tending to, rather than the mountain you feel you have now. Just face it when the time is right...perhaps the harder it is to tackle, the more strong and capable you will feel when you've found a way to tame it to what you want to live with. Think brave,jump in darling stranger. :))xx

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  5. I feel silly, all I ever think when I read your blogposts is, "so inspiring". I ought to have stronger, more creative thoughts than that! But it's the truth, you inspire me, you remind me to look deeper for who I want to be, because you are so much yourself. (And I know you have to tame and tend your garden, but oh how I love the images of its wildness! I wish for a garden like that.)

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  6. Lovely and insightful, Lunar :) Have you got good gardening books ? I wasn't thinking so much of "how toos" but books by gardeners about their gardens. With my mind firmly living obstinately from 1900 to about 1935 I'm thinking of Gertrude Jekyll ( http://www.gertrudejekyll.co.uk/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=20&Itemid=146 ), or Vita Sackville West but there must be others between them and Alan Titchmarsh !

    We only have a small yard with a peach tree in one corner, and two flower beds down the sides. As a neat freak I am a ruthless lopper, and unable to distinguish between what should and should not be there. I'll enjoy your efforts vicariously :)

    Love to you and Pickle xxxx

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  7. I too sometimes struggle with the concept of cutting and pullng and regularly 'abandon' my garden to it's own will and submit to my inability to grow decent veg! and then I get overwhelmed and think again.
    You see, in my mind I have a wonderful plot of self sufficiency and abundant provision for my family.....in reality I have an intermittent tangle and a very small house in which lives a BOY. We REALLY need our garden and when we don't live in a climate of perpetual monsoon, we sleep under canvas printed with jungle moon shadows and the Jupiter tree.
    So I put off the hacking (or 'ouching'as it feels)until i have become bad tempered with being soaked, scratched and stung attempting to reach the compost and the ground crunches underfoot from snails (eurgh and ow!).
    Then I get indignant.
    'Hey, this is balanced and harmonic bliss, this feels like a fight'.
    And then I have a tantrum. During my tantrum I turn to Spirit, I lament my lack of providing, have nothing nice to say about slugs and generally moan and act like a 5 yr old! And Spirit listens, sometimes laughs, sometimes chastises, sometimes even pities a little and then reminds me what I already know.
    Now I talk to the garden, they give me their ideas (often far to lavish for little old me to manage)and I offer up my needs. I remember that the opening up which allows you to feel pain is the same one that enables you to learn and communicate, and so I begin.
    I chop and pull and dig and move with explaination, thanks and mindfullness (I hope) Accept that I am crap at growing some veg, or most, but grow great herbs, leave things to flower and stop being so afraid to do.

    Most of all I approach my garden the same way you do that stone......for it is the same. To me it is a piece of my art in progress (even if it doesn't appear that way)I honour and transmute and decorate and am reminded that what you remove gives another a chance at life.
    That death doesn't exist here just an exchange of forms of energy (blessings for compost!)

    I'm still struggling with my dislike for slugs, especially the big ones. I just tackle a little bit at a time. I garden out my moods, sometimes my sadness,anger, frustrations or sometimes my peace and gratitude but she accepts me just the way I am today. I am a long way off getting it right but nature watches with amusement swaying me this way and that whilst I, mostly, enjoy trying.

    I hope my story may be of a little use, if not I am also happy to bring my tools down the road and give a hand! as we all know sorting someone else's tangle is often a lot easier than your own. Maybe together we (I know there are many)can help this progress begin. xx

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  8. Thank you all so much. You're all so surprisingly complimentary. Angharad, I hope I can write something like that, maybe in a year or two. It's a relief to hear my process reflected, but from someone further down the (garden) path. Or up it. xx

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  9. I also seem to struggle with process of spelling from time to time it appears!

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  10. Here in Ontario Canada we have had a horribly dry summer, which has had it's own challenges. Recent rain though has remided the weeds to grow. I do find that by mid-August I am weary of gardening, and yearn for inside-lives and stews and chili. But another month of harvest is ahead as all the tomatoes ripen at once. I cannot believe it has been 6 months, but that is what time does. Pickle is lovely, as usual. Maybe Thomas's garden needs this wild time. Be well!

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  11. It sounds to me as though your heart is in that very soil. A garden of love for you and little Pickle growing things together. :)
    Jess x x

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  12. I would like to volunteer for the Chagford Land Army, even though I don't live in Chagford and know nothing about gardening. I expect I could move some brambles or make cups of tea. Love to you and the capering Pickle,
    Jasmin x

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  13. I also garden in fits and starts, always wanting to make the most beautiful, most perfect cottage garden combination of flowers and vegetables. We do have flowers and vegetables and sometimes it does look very beautiful to my eyes and sometimes scruffy and unkempt. But it is always perfect; for nowhere else in the sphere of our human life more so than in our garden is the state of our relationship to ourselves and to the land more perfectly reflected. A little sculpting with the clippers, a little claiming the path as your own, a little trimming the tresses of the wild and wonderful woman of the green. You are her, she is you. And little by little you will reclaim yourself in all your power and all your wonder-full-ness. And as a fully paid up member of your Chagford Land Army I will gladly help you. xxx

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  14. I also garden in fits and starts, always wanting to make the most beautiful, most perfect cottage garden combination of flowers and vegetables. We do have flowers and vegetables and sometimes it does look very beautiful to my eyes and sometimes scruffy and unkempt. But it is always perfect; for nowhere else in the sphere of our human life more so than in our garden is the state of our relationship to ourselves and to the land more perfectly reflected. A little sculpting with the clippers, a little claiming the path as your own, a little trimming the tresses of the wild and wonderful woman of the green. You are her, she is you. And little by little you will reclaim yourself in all your power and all your wonder-full-ness. And as a fully paid up member of your Chagford Land Army I will gladly help you. xxx

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  15. Lunar .. you are one of a few people who, when i read your words and your thoughts and your feelings, I feel that there's hope for the human race and the world ..

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