What Writing Can Teach About Gardening
(But also I hate gardening)
I moved into my Nan's house a few months after she’d died.
It was a November afternoon. It was wet and cold, and I was eager to get inside and unpack the few boxes I’d brought with me from my parent’s house.
It’s a semi-detached home with a reasonable sized front and rear garden. Other houses on the street have dug up the lawns for parking spaces, but my Nan didn’t drive and neither do I, so there’s a lot of green on the other side of the front window.
In the winter it’s easier to ignore the garden. The grass grows so slowly, and the leaves are gone and the blooms missing.
It’s been more than three years now since I moved in but I’m beginning to feel guilty about the garden.
It isn’t totally overgrown or anything. The back lawn has a bistro table on it. There’s a beautiful tree with red blossom and a gorgeous row of lavender plants but weeds are pushing through the paving slabs next to them, brambles are tangled in the bushes, and tall tongues of something grass-like covers the soil beds like spiky green hair. I keep forgetting to water the plants in the pots and they look sickly, thirsty.
I started digging when the UK went into the lock down. I pulled a spade out of the shed and found my Nan's old secateurs, put on a pair of her gardening gloves, and started clearing some of the weeds. April had beautiful weather and within no time at all I saw the progress I was making. It was inspiring. I’d video-call my mum every evening to show her what I’d done that day. I felt proud of what I’d achieved.
When the weather changed, I went outside a little less often. I still kept it up but I thought it was okay to take a break and move a little more slowly.
After a couple of weeks, I noticed the weeds creeping back through the soil. They were growing rather rapidly along the fence.
I was disheartened to realise I couldn’t see all of the spaces in the clumpy soil I’d dug up.
Each time I looked out of the window I felt frustrated.
What was the point if it could return to normal so quickly?
