Taking Respite in the Garden

Frazzled by too much time hunched over a smartphone communicating with all and sundry, helping and advising daughters and dealing with tedious things like diary dates and logistics, I needed to get outside. My head was exploding, my shoulders were tight, my whole body felt drained and buzzing (in the wrong way!) from EMF overload. I knew that even a few minutes in the garden, despite the crepuscular gloom on an already dull, dank day, would work its magic. 

So I donned my thick coat and welly boots and opened the kitchen door into the cool, damp air, the dog barging past me in her excitement for seeing me go outside! I was instantly drawn into a game of frisbee, throwing the round red rubber disk across the wide lawn for her to run and catch. It’s a game we’ve been playing since she was a puppy, and she adores it just as much ten years down the line…seeing her pointy snout laid on the ground, her body flat, her eyes bright and expectant and still full of the enthusiasm of youth, it gives me such quiet joy to play with her and heap praise on her when she runs and catches it mid-air. Such simple pleasures. Man and Dog. A relationship as old as the hills. 

When she tired I took advantage and slipped away into the potting shed to find my trusty trowel to plant the few little pots of sage I’d picked up from the garden centre the other day. I have an area right by the kitchen where I have a good selection of herbs so that they’re easy to harvest when I’m cooking: along with sage there is rosemary, oregano, thyme of various varieties, marjoram, parsley, chives, tarragon (this dies yearly and needs replacing in these wet, cool, climes), camomile, and winter savoury. I also frequently use the rosemary and sage to make herbal drinks, accompanied by fresh ginger, lemon and honey in a mug of hot water - excellent as pick me ups and cleansers. I keep mint in a separate, contained area as it runs riot otherwise and makes the place look untidy! So I grow the varieties I love in an area near the dell, where there is the shade that it happily thrives in, contained by box hedging and gravel. 

That little planting job done, I realised it was too late to tackle the Dahlia tubers and the onions, so I contented myself with a quiet potter around the place spotting all the snowdrops coming through and some early daffodils too. There are already a few little wild pink cyclamen (which have never proliferated as I’d hoped they wood, I’ve no idea why) and the promise of crocus. I’ve been planting up a new area where a big conifer was cut down and where we have cut back an unsightly laurel hedge which had grown around the conifer and looked a mess once the conifer was gone. I put in some azaleas and hellebores, hydrangea paniculata and some tête-à-tête daffodil bulbs. I do hope they will all settle in and get along together well.

As I wandered up to the vegetable garden I noted all the fallen twigs from the recent storms and made a mental note to pick them up for kindling at some point. Meanwhile I was keen to inspect the much-need work my trusty gardener and his son had done on the raised beds. They worked so hard on Monday doing a job that I hate - they brought their van up the lane, opened the gate into the top field and the gate that leads to our garden and filled barrow after barrow with well-rotted manure that they had procured from somewhere (he didn’t tell me!) to top up the tired soil in the beds. Over the years, since I carefully created the vegetable area with raised beds and drystone walls to optimise the growing conditions in this harsh northerly climate, I have variously dug, not dug, fed, not fed, green manured, not green manured, the beds depending on my levels of enthusiasm. Since, despite my best efforts, it seems an area where I struggle to grow anything meaningful or of size, my enthusiasm naturally waxes and wanes like the moon. Some years I have got all excited and prepared the soil and planted seeds or plug plants when the first spring rays deign to appear, only to be followed by snow in April or endless rain and cold so everything shrivels and rots. Oh yes, it is a thankless task this northern gardening, especially on a plot whose aspect is less than idea - while south facing the land slopes the wrong way so the beams glance off it rather into it. There are also too many mature trees, some of which have already been removed with some more careful editing still to come, but short of chopping the lot down (UNTHINKABLE!), sufficient light remains a big problem. Thus the soil is slow to warm up and quick to cool down, which leaves such a small window of growing season that it is easy to become despondent. Yet looking at the beds now, with their thick dark blanket of manure, bursting with nutrients and improving the soil structure, I made a promise to myself to try harder this year. Let’s see what happens….

A large number of new daffodil bulbs have also been planted in the beds around the vegetable garden and in the orchard, so I’m looking forward to those warmer days to come when all the fresh new growth starts to appear, bringing renewed hope and optimism with it. 

I picked up an old pair of secateurs from the green house and finally got round to pruning the apical growth off the espaliered apples in an effort to keep the plant’s energy into producing fruit rather than new growth, and to keep it looking tidy, of course. I should take a look at the red currant bushes too and see what needs removing, but that can be a job for another day. 

From here I wandered back down towards the house, taking in the view behind and beyond it across the reservoir and towards the far hills, and savoured the sound of the rain-swollen stream in the dell below. Soon it will be filled with the little white nodding heads of snowdrops, followed by yellow daffodils and then again by sweet scented bluebells. The wild garlic will soon be abundant again, so wonderful with pasta or in salads, its starry white flowers bobbing in the breeze. The azaleas and rhododendrons will take their turn and the insects will hang noisily in the early summer air. So many joys still to come.

But for now I was content to return to the potting shed and fill the bird feeders for these still cold days and nights and a basket full of logs for the fire. Returning to the warmth of the kitchen and the promise of a cup of tea and a lemon shortbread, I understood the importance once more of getting outside and communing with nature. Trust me, there is no better therapy to calm a frazzled mind.