So, here we are at the end of another year and taking stock… both of our kitchen gardens and of ourselves. I have been quiet for a few weeks not because there was nothing to do on the soil but because an accident put both my wrists/arms out of action (I’m ok by the way…..and slowly healing). When the accident first happened at the end of November I was hopping mad (I could still hop!)…..there was so much I wanted to do in the garden. I love the winter months to work my little bit of soil…..there are fewer people around…..a peace descends…..time seems to expand…and the bare bones of the garden become visible….it is my time for planning and fantasizing about the perfect garden I will create.
But.
This year I was stopped in my tracks. For a couple of weeks I felt thoroughly miserable and frustrated and a tad sorry for myself. I couldn’t face visiting the garden knowing I wouldn’t be able to do any ‘work’…I cooped myself up at home, prepared myself for months of boredom and sank into a daily mantra of ‘it’s not fair, why me?’…..’I can’t grow anything’…. I became despondent. The hours felt like
days…..
I don’t quite know how or why it happened…..but there was a day when I woke up and decided to stop feeling sorry for myself…..I started to think about all the people far worse off than me…..I thought about people I know who have come through some truly awful times, people who have somehow muddled their way through their dark ‘winters’ and have come out the other side to find their ‘spring’….and with these thoughts I found myself taking the walk down the hill to visit my kitchen garden…
It was, of course, looking a little sad…..but it didn’t matter…….there was hope in that soil. And that is it in a nutshell. As I sat outside my shed, wrapped up tight against the cold wind, I pondered all that my little kitchen garden grows……on this tiny scrap of land I have grown a ton of veggies…..but I’ve also grown friendships, grown patience, grown gratitude, grown optimism, grown peace…….I have grown humility and love. I have grown empathy and compassion.
As I walked away, through the magic gate, the words of a Persian poet rang in my head……’this too shall pass’…. we will all have ‘spring’ again one day…..I hope, for you all, that your spring is just around the corner…
