The Secret Garden

Set me free

I love this time of year. The garden is bursting with greenery, plants are setting seed and everywhere is the promise of an abundant harvest. Even my train journey into work is a delight as I can peer out of the window and see how many things I can identify. I see damsons, elderberries, apples galore... and herbs mullein, horsetail and many others. I've already been out into the overgrown wasteland near my home and picked blackberries and elderberries to make into cordial and jelly. I've even found wild hops in this urban paradise!

I seem to have finally got my spark back. After months of languishing in the doldrums of depression I feel like I might actually be ready to face the world again. I have a project. It has all come about as the result of a disaster, and I'm choosing to see it as an opportunity for growth. My rented garden was recently massacred by the landlord's son - everything was cut down to the ground. Both my housemate and I were horrified. And then something strange happened. I decided to see it as an opportunity to remodel the garden; to really get stuck in and build something worthwhile. And as soon as I did, it was as if a switch went on inside. A lightbulb lit up.

So this bank holiday weekend I have set about gathering bricks to build a herb spiral and old carpet to lay down as mulch, and I have spent a joyous three days pottering about in the garden tidying up old plants, repotting things and giving them some love. It's been food for the soul, it really has.

I've also discovered an inner city London permaculture group and this fabulous website called Shoot where you can sign up to receive tailor-made emails about your garden. You tell them what you are growing and what type of advice you need, and they send you regular updates telling you what you need to be doing at that time of year for each plant you have registered. Magic!

I feel like I have found where I need to be. Wherever I am, I am ready to put down roots, become established, and to build a life for myself. I need to dig in the earth and grow things. I am ready to live.

Barking up the right tree at last

To say I was upset by my relationship breaking up is to put it mildly. I was crushed. Devastated. The news came out of the blue, and then it took a further 8 months of agonising separation to finally lay the beast to rest. My ex is a bastard and a coward. And I never thought I would say that aloud, let alone publish it for the world to see.

The hardest part to accept for me has been the death of our dreams. We had big plans for our future together, and they really were the stuff of my dreams. I have always felt that there was something more to life than this, that life should be more, more involved, more satisfying, more self-sufficient. The 9-to-5 slog of office life just didn't seem right. Separating work from pleasure, needing to make time to exercise outside the working day because work is so sedentary. I felt (and still feel) like a hamster in a wheel. Like I'm running and ultimately getting nowhere. What sense of progress do I feel when I lay my head to rest on Sunday evening, knowing that on Monday morning I will get up to start the whole routine again? Maybe I need kids. Maybe I need to see something growing and changing and developing to mark the time and give it meaning. I know I need to feel that I am somehow making meaning out of my life, moving forwards, not simply shuffling around this mortal coil unto death.

And that is what our dreams were. To put meaning into life. To live an embedded life. To have witchlets, an allotment, a smallholding. To raise veg, and livestock and a couple of humans, and to be happy.

After much soulsearching I now realise I can have those dreams again. But like Sysiphus, the rock at the bottom of the hill feels so large and heavy. The sense of loss I have is of having nearly reached the summit only to watch the rock roll inexorably back down the hill. I trudge after it, spit on my palms and put my shoulder to it once more. Heave! I heave with all my might. I can feel it budge, and I know in my heart it is an easier task for two.

That is my great sadness. Not that I had these dreams and lost them; that I found someone else who shared these dreams, and whom I loved, and who wanted to realise these dreams together and I lost him. He took away that special connection. I now know I can have these dreams again. What I do not know is who I will find to share them with me. Who will I find to connect with and love and make these dreams real?

My first step has been discovering WWOOF and seeing this.

Food: Self-catering in shared field kitchen (buy your own food-but can help yourself from a well stocked veg and fruit and salad gardens and eggs and lamb. Accommodation: Yurt, 12ft canvas bell tent, gypsy bowtop wagon, barn. Earth loo and rustic shower. 3 acres, sheep, chickens, veg, 2 polytunnels, salad business, horticultural therapy medicinal herb garden. A chance to learn about medicinal herbs in a working herb garden and dispensary, where herbal medicines are made. Frances is a qualified herbal medicine practitioner who makes her own medicines from the fields, green lanes and herb garden. 2 days work required if bringing own tent. 3 days work required if in my accommodation. In exchange for the work you will get a unique chance to see a working medicinal herb garden.

It's exciting, beautiful, meaningful to me. And I want to share it.