Autumn days
let the mess unfold
It’s day 5 of a month long nature writing course that I signed up to. I write:
“I sit on the garden bench surrounded by plants waiting to be planted. I hear sounds of action, car doors, yelping dogs across the valley, a chainsaw. It seems hard to find sounds that are the natural world, that are my natural space. I sit. The air hints of rain. The sky smudges with purple and pink distant clouds. I hear an apple fall off the tree. The garden is the end of day still. I am trying hard to hear the stillness, but the cars, the dog, the chainsaw….. I focus on the yellow too tall dahlias, leaves turning at the edges with orange and brown. The asters are having a moment. The rose I pruned back at Christmas is flourishing. I am stepping inwards, embracing the urban boundary of the land, sinking into the grass with my bare feet. It’s hard to be still. It’s hard to listen for stillness. It feels like I am looking for something I have lost. I think that is why I take photos.”
It’s an abstract little thought, unedited and in the moment. I signed up to the course on a whim. I also signed up (planned) for another writing course so I have ended up doing two at the same time. I have discovered this is not one of my wisest moves. Over the past week I have been desperately trying to squeeze moments to scribble down some words in an attempt to look like I am giving both course the attention they deserve. I am not and feel like I am failing miserably. It reflects in what I write, in the deadhead tiredness I feel and the FOMO I have for other creatives I see around me whether it a gardener, a writer or a photographer doing what I want to be doing. I am like a car trying to start. You turn the ignition but there is no fuel in the tank so it can not start, all you can hear is the engine attempting to turn.
What I wrote on day five was my hands in the air moment. That moment when you realise you are juggling many things, perhaps too many things. I am saying “should” way too many times in conversations. As my dear friend points out “this is not cool”. I have perhaps overfilled my cup with things I should do, needed to do and wanted to do and it was encapsulated in the words I wrote. I was searching for the connection I wanted to have with nature, with my garden but all I could hear were the sounds of life outside the garden space. A tap, tap, tap of the “shoulds”. Stopping to try and spend time in nature made me realised that perhaps I just need to stop.
Autumn is the month of mess as end of year growth dies down and tumbles back into the soil. Things definitely feel messy and I’ve decided to embrace it. The garden needs work. While I manage to plant out some recently brought treasures, some sit in pots waiting for space to be cleared. My sweet peas have started to sprout but need placing elsewhere. I need to figure out where my ranunculus are that I left in pots last year. I did manage to harvest my Zinnia seed heads for next season so I am taking that as a win. I will have time to tend to all of this, it is just not right now and that is ok. Things will shift and move and more time will be created, I am sure of this. For now I am on day 12 of the course, a day behind and you know as I write out my thoughts on a scrap of paper with ink stained hands (the story of my relationship with my pen is for another day), I am ok with that.