Last week I committed to an at home writing retreat, in which I promised myself no gardening and no baking. Well I got a great bit of writing done, not vast amounts but good insights into a large project I have been working on. I did break my promise to myself and picked rhubarb (gardening) and made a rhubarb pie (baking).
This weekend the sun has been blazing and we are promised a ton of rain on Monday, and have been getting loads of rain and cool weather over the past month. This hasn’t been great for the farmers or my own little amount of edible crops but it has kept the flowers in sort of a slow development. The lilacs have lasted longer it seems, and I now think that many of my flowers are going to all bloom at once, peonies with poppies etc.
I’m not sure what gardening does to the soul. I could say something poetic and philosophical. Come to think of it, it is a bit like writing. Today I did a first draft on part of the property, “editing” unwanted stuff growing beneath other stuff and crowding out things I had planted. I am content to leave things as they are for the moment, and go back for the next edit or draft to bring things closer in line with my vision. The whole place is looking a little ratty right now, like a first draft, rough edges, piles of discarded flotsam and flora and freshly planted annuals wondering where the hell to look and how the heck did they land in my garden.
I have a feeling that after the rain tomorrow things will look and feel a little more fitting, a little more as if they belonged.
Anyway what I love about this ain’t philosophical: Right now my shins and arms are torn to shreds — the dog won’t stop licking my wounds — from thorns and wild raspberries, and before I had a shower I was positively filthy, leaves and cedar things clinging to my hair, my feet black, even in my gardening shoes — fingernails and toenails caked with soil, my back was covered in sweat to which more wood like things and debris had adhered.
So this brings us to the absolute joy which is the pleasure and luxury of running a cool shower and scrubbing it all away the best of both worlds, the woodland wild faun, as I fancy myself, and the shaved guy who has to go out into the world on a rainy Monday morning, dreaming of his weekend wrestling with Junipers, Hawthornes, the shears, the lawn mower, gas, extensions cords and a bit of sunburn.
Andrew Binks 