Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears
Hello friends!
Goodness me it is a long time since I tapped out a letter here! Things got a little bit difficult for a while. I don’t think it’s uncommon for a human bean to have a bit of a wintery time (at any time of year).... That thing of only being capable of the bare minimum (in my case parenting three children)…and anything and everything else feels somehow insurmountable. When I would enter into these types of states before having children, the very idea, even of getting out of bed seemed utterly impossible. It’s all relative. In those days I would just about manage to go to work, keep up some semblance of an okay person, but otherwise I would stay firmly in my bed. Lots of people are talking about anxiety and depression now, so it doesn’t feel like a mad, bad or dangerous thing to do.., but it is vexing, and perplexing when it happens, because of the suddenness with which one is rendered incapable, and the ferocity of the worry and sadness. I’ve been dealing with it (and not dealing with it) on and off for thirty years now, and I’m no longer scared or angry about it; just frustrated that I must move through it, capitulate; cast aside everything except the essentials, be EXTREMELY nice and patient with myself and KEEP GOING.
Gardening helps of course, and on the days when I have managed to get out and do it, I have felt instantly and exponentially better. But I’ve never touted gardening as a ‘cure all’ for anxiety and depression because the problem is that you have to get out there FIRST. There has to be a leap, and that sort of leap – the one where you open the door and sniff the fresh air and pick up a trowel, or some secs, is a really big one if you’re struggling even to do the essentials. This letter is testament to the fact that this week has been better. Bulbs have been going in, bit by bit, most days, and leaves have been swept and squirrelled away for leaf-mould ...and last week the lawn got a much-needed chop.
Halloween (which I fully regard as a GARDEN thing!) was…what shall we say? …Achieved? Endured? I don’t know, but pumpkins were carved and candles were lit and sweeties were given out and eaten. This only happened because there are children to please and moments to be created for them. I had much bigger plans of course – I was going to rush to market and get twigs to up-light, and I was going to kokedama cyclamen and hang them from the gutter like little floral flames.
I had put more cyclamen into large pots and they were supposed to flank the front door, only they never made it round the side of the house. Too heavy. Too difficult. Too much. Nobody cared of course, including myself, because like I said, I’ve learnt to give in gracefully and let go.
There have also been wins keeping me going. The dastardly spectre of 11 + diminished slightly by the discovery of the Mary Poppins of all tutors who (at vast expense) is increasing my child’s confidence with maths. The fact that this loss of confidence only occurred because she was one of the very few in her class NOT being tutored is raw with me, but I’m not dwelling on it. Poppins is expensive, but what price confidence??? AND I have re-learned long division…Who’dve thunk it? Then there are the two podcasts that I finally managed to get out, after the audio got spoiled for some unknown reason. My new state of mind allowed me to outsource the edit, and there are now two more episodes out in the world which I love. A book was read! Yes, a real actual book, which took me away somewhere else for a couple of hours every day and left me with real feelings of joy, and a need to connect with others. You know that thing when you really need to talk about a book you’ve read? Well THAT! So I swallowed all the misgivings and pulled together a random group of local women to form a book group. We are meeting in December and I am excited.
The best win though, was the smallest one. I shall call it THE SMELL.
A few weeks ago I smelled a peculiar smell in my kitchen. It was wafty and unpleasant and distinctly BIN- like. I emptied the bin, cleaned out the bin containers, added bicarbonate of soda. The smell was still there, and getting worse. Over the ensuing days I cleaned out every single cupboard, I removed the kick-boards and hoovered and swept, I cleaned out the fridge and the freezer. The smell was still there. Anxiety hit a peak last weekend, when, in desperation I asked my Rotter to help me pull out the dishwasher. Nothing. He said he could smell the smell, but faintly, but when I suggested there wasn’t much more we could do and that we should probably think about making some holes in the floor and ceiling he took it all back, saying he actually didn’t smell anything and it was JUST IN MY HEAD. Yup friends. I got gas-lighted by my most best beloved. Thanks again, to my slightly altered state I decided to turn to someone who is ALWAYS there for me – my six year old son, who announced that he could absolutely smell the smell, and that it reminded him of rotting oranges. And do you know what I found dear readers? After days and weeks of tearing my hair out, wondering if I really WAS going mad, picturing dead things rotting away beneath floorboards, dousing myself with Guerlain in the mornings to keep the smell away? I picked up a rarely-used pepper grinder from the kitchen counter, to spy a shrivelled lemon wedge, hidden between pepper grinder and salt. It was so desiccated there wasn’t even any mould on it, but it HONKED friends! Sanity restored. Son basically deified for identifying citrus – I could not love him more.
The smell is gone and I am fine.
Everything is, in fact, fine, now that the smell is gone.
It's ALL relative.
Which brings me to the smells I’m looking forward to in the garden soon – here are my favourites, with more here but if you can only fit one into your garden then it should probably be sarcococca, which smells utterly divine and does a fairly good impression (if you squint your eyes) of box if you’ve given up with it because of caterpillar or blight.
All the good things, always
x Laetitia
PS you may have missed:
My podcast - TWO new episodes
Excellent gardening Christmas presents! (part of my collaboration with Gardena)
My review of Jack Wallington's wonderful book, Wild About Weeds