The hair trigger sensitivity of my balance upon a decision made is worrying to observe.
It is a thing I do not usually choose to observe, opting rather to just change my mind, tilt my world on its axis almost daily, and move along. Nothing to see here.
On those occasions when by chance or choice, I freeze the moment when it happens, and even force myself to stop, and stay put, it is alarming.
It was a grey, muggy day today and I was in the garden. I sat a little too often in my chair, listening to a choir of blackbirds, and a whitethroat’s piercing call on the telephone lines above me. It was in theory not too hot to be in the polytunnel, but it was wearing weather.
I’m reclaiming the garden. The theory is that I can make both myself and the old garden well again, at the same time. It’s a delicate balance, the whole thing. My vision is a bit like the hierarchy of needs, except it’s a hierarchy of recovery.
Here’s how it’s (hopefully) going to work. I will find the energy and strength to repair a bit of the garden. The act of doing this, together with consuming the resulting food, will start to heal me. With my additional health, strength, optimism, and energy I will move forward and restore the garden a little further. This will produce more good food, fresh and nutrient dense, which, as well as the endeavour involved, will make me feel even better.
Together, the garden and I, we will build up our hierarchy pyramid to at least half way - and by then we may jointly have the energy and joy to share whereby there will be something to exchange, and we will be ‘making a living’ again. Though first, we must make ourselves live.
Anyway, that’s the way it’s supposed to go.
Gardens tend to wildness, and although wildness would not hurt the land in question - no land can be injured by wildness - it would not, from my point of view, be productive. It would not in fact be a garden. It has been previously tamed, and its new wildness would be skin deep and problematic.
Judiciously, with great concern for its ancestral wild state, I have to take small sections of it and carefully tame them. Trim their edges, nourish their soil, ‘tidy them up’. The weeds are brazen, promiscuous, and omnipotent in their bold spring advance, and I have just a pair of hands, some hand tools, and a few hours a day to make choices, decide what I can tame, and what must gallop away from me, destined to be harnessed further up the pyramid.
I am an Audible addict. It’s a matter of concern to me that reading books has become something of a challenge of late. I think that’s not unconnected to smart phones and apps (probably including Audible) reducing us to peripherals - another thing that I need to address as part of this process. For now, while I garden or wash up, I listen to books. Today, I was listening to Roger Deakin’s breathtakingly beautiful Notes from Walnut Tree Farm as I worked.
About eight weeks ago, I had my hair cut, for the first time in well over a year. My hair grows like bindweed. It’s impossible to control, and shows a strength and determination I would so appreciate in the rest of my body. I’m extremely conflicted about hair cutting, but I had it done, and I liked it. I’m booked in to have it cut again on Friday.
I’m not a self carer. I would forget my hair if I could. I often do, in fact. I have very frequently left it untouched for years. It grows long, thick, and straight. Somewhere in my deepest imagination there is a belief that this long, flowing hair looks serene and wholesome. That, like many people I admire, I look good with a long, river-smooth mane. This deception has persisted. I remember at 15 thinking my waist length, centre parted, chestnut mop looked very Ali McGraw and looking back on rare photographs, it looks more Ozzy Osbourne - curtains enclosing my face, leaving only a short, freckled nose on display.
I have battled with myself to accept my own compromise with wildness. If I would like to look a little better, feel a little better about myself, and be, perhaps, productive, I need to embrace some attention to the details.
Roger Deakin was talking about a walk with a friend, when they disturbed a serene, local lady, who had been reading, I think, by a lake. He described her as having ‘sophisticated grey plaits.’
This, dear reader, is all it takes. A phrase in a book, a five second Instagram story, a line in a song. I was due a water break, so I strode over to my camp chair and sat down. I immediately woke up my phone, opened the phone app, and found the hairdresser’s number. I should cancel. After all, at my age, who would not want sophisticated grey plaits. Really long ones.
For once, I managed to press pause, and watch my finger reach to dial, and for once, I managed to stay my own hand. I will not look sophisticated with grey plaits, even should I have the patience to grow my hair for a few years, because apart from anything else, my dodgy left shoulder makes it well nigh impossible for me to plait my own hair.
This is my garden, and my life. We both need some care and attention. Neither of us will benefit this time from benevolent neglect, those days have gone.
I think that being a postmenopausal, slightly unwell woman is very similar to being a neglected garden. The cultivations of the past mean that a gentle wildness is not an option. Now we must be curated, we must accept some limitations, and some well meant restraint, if we are to use what we have, to become what we can be.
I have faith that I can restore our soil, and that together, we will grow first ourselves, and then an offering for others. If only we will both accept our limits, and not allow anything to deplete our reserves, or blow away our precious topsoil. We both need to learn the value of pause.