Covered in mud

Rookie Gardener

Photo by David Ballew on Unsplash

Yesterday I dug down deep with a spade amongst the twigs and horse dung and cardboard and earth of the compost heap. I tried to remember the names of all the plants I had been told about but mostly failed. I picked up an earthworm and tucked it back into the soil. I saw a dun coloured female blackbird hopping in the community garden I am learning at, a garden that is an oasis of raised beds and trees tucked behind a church in the heart of the city. I wheeled a wheelbarrow down an uneven path and marvelled that all this existed right beneath my nose and yet I have only found it recently.

The mint is thriving in unexpected places. The rhubarb is huge and is growing cauliflower like shoots amid its giant parasols of fleshy leaves. The rose I pruned brutally a month ago is not only still alive but flourishing, new growth seeking the sun. The spinach I planted didn’t come up but the beetroot has. A few tulips are still glowing shiny scarlet and sunshine yellow in the troughs in the carpark. The flowerbeds are bursting with colour. The fuschia look like tiny bells. Outside the fence scowling youth skulk by smelling of weed.

I feel like I have run away from my phone, escaped its vice of endless notifications and the idea that I can never finish anything and never catch up. In a garden nothing is ever finished anyway and all the pressure to respond right this very second drops off. I feel peaceful here and my ignorance isn’t held against me. It is easy to reach a state of calm focus and lose hours in poking the roots of chives into small pots.

I grew up an island girl who only had to walk out of our garden and cross a couple of fields to get to the cliffs. I climbed trees and watched the sea through the branches. The flowers on the gorse smelt like vanilla. The gulls floated on up drafts. The tide rushed in and out. I collected shells, pine cones, rabbit skulls and twigs. I didn’t notice nature because I was in it. I took it completely for granted.

Now I watch the blue tits flitting from branch to branch on the elderflower on a city street. I roam the park, listening out for the shrieks of the parakeets and the tap of the woodpecker. I appreciate the swans and ducks and moorhens and coots gliding on the small muddy lake. I look forward to April and the return of the leaves on the trees. I revel in the sweetness of the lilacs. I am grateful.

I leave the garden and walk up the road to the bus stop. The city assaults me with the stink of fumes from loud exhausts, exploded bin bags and hot tarmac. The noise of traffic is incessant, a cacophony. People bustle by on urgent errands or stand in the middle of pavements entranced by their phones. And yet there is a handful of mint in my bag to make tea with when I get home and my boots are muddy. I am right where I need to be.