Category Archives: growing things

Hello small slug

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Yesterday morning I washed a few small Desiree potatoes from the garden and left them out to dry. One of them had a narrow round bore-hole and I washed this out.

An hour later (when making a cup of tea) I saw a black blob on the skin of one of the potatoes. It was a slug, as fat as my thumbnail.

He must have been hiding in that hole. I’m glad he came out to say hello before I baked the potato and ate it. I didn’t squish him, but I didn’t feel quite kind enough to set him free in the garden. I put him in the bin – I’m sure he’ll be happy in there.

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widget spotting – here it is at bits of sky, marijka’s world, creative resistance to survival, Naturally Green Blog, Wood among the trees… small stones are TAKING OVER THE WORLD! Ha ha ha… (evil laugh)

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Have a lovely weekend x

Sweet rain and gratitude

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Before I grew vegetables, I managed to be grudgingly grateful for the rain. I am a sun lover, and rain gets in the way. ‘At least the grass will be happy,’ I conceded.

We have had three glorious days of baking heat. The earth is parched, cracked. I went to bed last night with a plan to water the vegetable patch today. My veg patch is a little way from the house, and so this involves two hoses and a lot of time and effort.

This morning it is raining. It is raining on my yellow courgettes and my raspberries. It is raining on my embryonic runner beans and my scarlett chard. Sweet rain.

After planning this post, my Daily Dharma email arrived. Sychronicity:

The roots of all living things are tied together. Deep in the ground of being, they tangle and embrace. This understanding is expressed in the term nonduality. If we look deeply, we find that we do not have a separate self-identity, a self that does not include sun and wind, earth and water, creatures and plants, and one another.

Joan Halifax Roshi, from Essential Zen

Tangled roots. Precisely.

And who knows what else we might be grateful for, if we were able to find a different perpective?

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I’ve really enjoyed writing here this week. Something else to be grateful for. Thank you for reading!

Radishes, pesky mosquitos and gratitude

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I just pulled a bunch of radishes from the vegetable patch.

They are glossy red, fading quickly to pure white tips, with bushy green leaves. When I slice them thinly you’ll be able to see the light through them. They’ll pack a CRUNCH.

I couldn’t find a photo online that came anywhere close to how fresh and red they look, so you’ll have to look at this one and use your imagination. Or maybe I’m just biased.

It’s been difficult for me to keep my world balanced for a couple of weeks now. Questions about whether or not my books are selling/will sell have been like a cloud of pesky mosquitos buzzing around my head. This week a big chain of bookshops sent 200 copies of The Letters back to Snowbooks to pulp. I feel a little sad for them, but it’s also a relief – there – that’s happened, and it wasn’t the end of the world. It’s just a small proportion of the ones they ordered in the first place. It’s early days.

Then a friend texted to tell me how much she was enjoying The Blue Handbag.

Radishes are just as important, anyway. And my other seedlings – chard, celeriac, runner beans, beetroot, carrots, french beans, butternut squash, cucumber, purple sprouting broccoli. The first new potatoes might be ready soon, to be boiled and slathered in butter. The garlic won’t be far behind.

The books will sell, or they won’t. People will enjoy them, or they won’t. I’ll keep writing them whatever happens. I’ll keep growing my veggies. If one person thoroughly enjoys each book I write, it will be like eating a new potato slathered in butter. Anything more (and I’ve already had so much more) is really more than enough.

I’m off to do some weeding now. Thank you for listening.

Sometimes I think I must be mad

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I have chosen several threads to run through my life.

I am a therapist. I am a writer. I am interested in Buddhism. I grow things.

Sometimes I think I must be mad.

I have a private practice – I’m on my own. There’s no sick or holiday pay, and sometimes I don’t have enough clients. The work is hard – it’s always challenging me. I’ve written for more than a decade, and have had more than a decade of rejections and self-doubt. It’s hard work. I’m on my own. I haven’t made a penny from it so far. My interest in Zen encourages me to dissolve my ego. I sit and look at a wall and become aware of my breath. It’s hard work. I’m on my own. I grow things. Slugs eat my seedlings. Deer eat my tulips. It’s hard work. I’m on my own.

Other times, I feel blessed.

Like last night, driving home after two amazing sessions with long term clients. What a privelige to be there with them for a part of their journey. Like this morning, writing this blog, and working on my novel, and getting emails from people who appreciate what I do. Like after my meditation, when my mind begins to settle and I can see everything just a little bit more clearly. Like the days I slice courgettes from their plants with a sharp knife and fry them in butter with my own garlic.

The threads are really golden threads.

This is one of my favourite quotes, which I plucked from Sally Basile’s eclectic garden. Another thank you to the author of the quote – I’ve carried these words around with me for a long time now. Their edges have been worn down by my reading them – they are even more beautiful.

When you’re hanging on by a thread, identify that thread and do all you can to strengthen it. Gardening is my thread, consistently providing therapy through years of ups and downs. If this blink in time seems a bit crazier, well, perhaps it is. Gardening serves as a gentle reminder that the wheel turns and seasons come and go, each filled with its own impossibly tender beauty. So maybe it’s time to go outside and look for tulip noses poking through the damp earth and reaching into the winter mist.

When you’re hanging on by a thread, identify that thread and do all you can to strengthen it. I wish you luck in finding your own threads. I’m supported by so many, I could lift up both my feet up and I still wouldn’t fall over.

On gardening, writing and runner beans on their tippy-toes

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I found this Jeanette Winterson quote this morning on the very wonderful Peony Moon. I hope Michelle doesn’t mind me transplanting it here – I’ll be very careful not to damage the roots. It seemed criminal not to post it, what with the title of my blog and all.

“I learned to garden the way I learned to write – out of necessity. We needed vegetables and flowers, and I needed to tell myself a long story about life – I am still telling it – a kind of beanstalk that grows and grows, and I can climb it, both to escape the possibility of life at the bottom, and to find another world where giants and castles and harp-playing hens are still to be found. Gardening, like story-telling, is a continuing narrative. One thing leads to another. Like stories, there is always something going on in the garden long after the gardener has gone to bed. The thing grows, unfolds, changes, develops a maddening life of its own. For me, as a writer, I go to sleep with an idea in my head, and it takes hold during the night. I open the back door in the morning, and the tulips that refused to look at me the night before, have opened in the sun.” – Jeanette Winterson

You can read the whole article here – I shall do so when I’ve done my daily writing.

It’s also relevant as Michelle is the first of my 100 Readers to finish reading about my gardener Leonard - she liked him (phew) and wants to adopt his dog Pickles. She’ll be answering her interview questions over the next week or so – I’ll let you know when the interview is up. In the meantime you can sign up to the mailing list by putting your email in the box on the right.

As I type, my runner beans are stretching up on their tippy-toes towards the twine and my blackcurrants are plumpening nicely. My leek seedlings are imperceptibly thickening and my Johnson’s Blue geranium is magicking more and more sunny-sky-blue blooms.

Here’s to planting, and to words.

PS talking of growing things, have a go at this - very lovely and a little bit addictive…

On not having the foggiest idea

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Yesterday afternoon I decided to make a path between my vegetable patch beds by putting down weed suppressing membrane and covering it with bark chip.

I didn’t have the foggiest idea what I was doing. I didn’t know if I was strong enough to get the five bags of bark chip into my car. I didn’t know how to attach the membrane to the soil. I didn’t know if the whole project was a waste of time – if my path would be a complete failure.

It reminded me of starting my first novel, Thaw (out next year). I didn’t know anything about writing fiction. I hadn’t read any how-to books or taken any classes. I didn’t know anyone writing novels. I’d read prodigiously all my life and written poetry for years, but had never put more than a few hundred words together, never mind eighty thousand.

The only way to approach it without scaring myself half to death was by calling it an experiment. I decided to write 1000 words a day and just see where I got to. This is how I felt about my vegetable patch project yesterday and, now I come to think of it, about most of my life.

The path is finished – it looks a little raggedy, but it’s functional. I’m rather proud of it. I’m currently working on my fourth novel, and I still don’t have the foggiest idea about what I’m doing or how it will turn out. Isn’t it fun?!