Chores - the sequel

That Hideous Man recommended an article by Tim Chester about washing up. While I don’t agree with his rant about dishwashers, there’s a whole lot of truth in what he says. It reminded me of Brother Lawrence (The Practice of the Presence of God) and his continual awareness of God’s presence as he worked in the monastery kitchen.

Our vegetable garden is laid out monastery style - the paths between the beds are just the right width for kneeling, so that you can multi-task while weeding.

The key is always our attitude, not the task.

A joyous chore

Following my entry yesterday about chores, I realised that I had failed to comment on one of my favourite chores of the year. About this time of the year the autumn fruiting raspberries need to be pruned. This is a job that I love. I’ve blogged about this before, but I think it merits a few more words, as I did the pruning yesterday (but not the weeding or mulching).

I like this annual task because there’s an element of restoring order by removing the old, dead growth, and creating a blank canvas for the new year.

This year the pleasure is more about the promise or, at least, the anticipation of spring. It’s been an unusually harsh winter, and most of the plants are several weeks behind their normal schedule. Most of the spring bulbs are barely breaking the surface of the earth, when typically they would be in bloom by now. But the raspberries are tough, so hopefully they can take the treatment. Maybe it’s an act of madness; I prefer to see it as an act of optimism, or even an act of faith - time will tell!

The Earth is a miracle.
Life remains a mystery.

From HOME by Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Bloggers block

I've got so many ideas swirling around in my head just now, but somehow I can't settle down to write anything. I suspect that it'll fall into place in due course - if I can just let it happen.

In the meantime...

This seems to confirm that there can be a silver lining to a raincloud.

A ray from on high

To see this world a person needs more than eyes.

"You need a certain dose of inspiration, a ray from on high, that is not in ourselves, in order to do beautiful things."

Vincent van Gogh

The garden at Easter

Even if our words were inadequate - and they often are - the garden would tell its own story of Easter.

The pulsatilla rubra would tell us of the blood of the sacrifice.




The pulsatilla purpurea would tell us of the majesty of the king.








And the fanfare of daffodils would tell us of our need and duty to worship him.

Detached

I usually find the garden very uplifting and inspirational at this time of year - all the energy and promise of spring. But this year... it's different. I haven't been able to do any gardening for about six months because of a wee problem with my elbow.

Yesterday I found myself looking out of the window and almost not recognising the garden (the garden that we've been working on for 16 years). I had a sense of detachment. I wasn't excited by it; couldn't think what we were planning to do this year; had no sense of vision for it.

I was thinking about this in church today - and I realised that (in this case) the opposite of detached isn't attached, but engaged. I haven't fallen out of love with the garden - I just need to get acquainted with it (when my elbow has fully recovered). It's been too long since I got my hands dirty or even just pottered about a bit.

So - as is my wont - I started a wee doodlegram (see below). It seems to me that if we start to drift away from something it's fairly easy to re-engage with a wee bit of nurturing. But if we get to the stage of being detached, a more difficult and lengthy recovery process is needed. I'm not sure if there is a way back when we get beyond detachment to alienation.

There may also be other staging posts along the route from engaged to detached, but I was happy enough with the analogy as it stands (working on the 'less is more' basis OR I need to keep things simple enough for my brain to cope with).

Friday photo: Snow capped

Friday photo: cold and twisted

Friday photo: Winter bloom

Friday photo: fall-en wonder

Friday photos: Double blueberry delight

Friday photo: mellow fruitfulness

Small changes, radical effects

This morning started normally (well, it’s been ‘normal’ for a couple of weeks) with an early morning run. It was beautiful but not spectacular morning, with a tinge of pink in the sky and some small pockets of mist clinging to the hills. After showering and breakfast, normality was abandoned. We decided to opt out of church this morning. Instead we will go this evening to hear That Hideous Man concluding his series on Ecclesiastes.

This meant that we had a large chunk of a day with no specific plans, which also allowed some space for thinking.

Yesterday we went to visit my parents. My dad is finding it difficult to maintain his garden, and he wanted a small tree removed. So we took a variety of tools and gardening clothes with us to do it for him.

True to form it started to rain as the removal exercise reached the point of no return. So I pressed on, getting wet and covered in soil and mud. Every time that I have removed a tree or shrub I have the same experience. Eighty percent of the job is done fairly quickly, but there are always a few roots that are buried deep or are hidden away – and this is the bit that takes the time. Anyway, I knew that I was nearing the end, when my mum came out to give me a telling off – it was wet and I should come in. The first bit was obvious! The second bit was a judgement call – it was getting very wet, but I was nearly there. I decided to keep going, and a few minutes later the last root was cut and the stump came out.

Due to the weather, we weren’t able to complete the clearing up, but we’d done the important bit. My parents will be able to do some of the clearing up (I took away the heavy stuff) or it can wait until our next visit.

It was only after we had removed the tree that I realised how much of an issue it had been for both of my parents. Maybe it was just a generous display of gratitude, but I got the impression that this tree had been a major problem for them. Removing the tree did open up a bit more light in their garden, but for them it was as if the whole garden had been liberated from a shadow that had hung over it for years. What might seem to me to be a minor change, was for them a significant improvement, and had I given up they would have been left with their problem for a few weeks.

My conclusion – sometimes the biggest changes can come from apparently small adjustments.

By way of a postscript, I spent almost as long this morning cleaning up the tools that I as had used, as I did taking the tree out. But as I removed the grime, I was able to do some thinking and that can’t be a bad thing, can it?

Friday photo: Consider the lily

Friday photo: Digital digitalis

Compost Corner

I spent several hours in the garden today (and I'm feeling a few aches and pains in my ageing body!). Most of the time was spent trying to sort out Compost Corner. This is an area that we've set aside to manage our compost. Since we garden organically, the generation of our own compost is quite important to us. It helps us to recycle a lot of material and it's satisfying to see the vegetable peelings, grass, paper etc breaking down and forming nutritious, beneficial compost.

However, there is a downside - it can be hard work. We've got 4 bins for compost - the idea being that the material moves along the bins until it's ready for use. Transferring the decomposing material is labour intensive - and frequently neglected. Unsurprisingly, it's also the most prolific area of the garden for weeds!

Anyway, after today's efforts (including valuable contributions from the Fish Wife)it's looking a lot better now.

The name Compost Corner was given to it by a friend who is a professional gardener. It was years later that I made the connection with the anarchic children's television show TISWAS. The clip below gives you an idea of the insanity of it all - but be warned if you like The Who, you may not want to watch it!

... so the cycle continues

The beauty within

The promise of spring

I've always liked spring - with the sense of hope and vitality that it brings. This year it seems to me that spring lasted a long time (which is a good thing). The first snowdrops appeared in our garden in late January, and as I write we still have a crop of daffodils mixed in with our tulips and other things. The herbaceous plants that died off last autumn are unfurling their leaves, and generally things look not too bad.

That is, it doesn't look too bad if you look at the garden with a positive disposition. This brings me back to my theme of optimism and pessimism. Pessimistically, there are weeds sprouting everywhere, the lawn is mainly moss, the veg patches are weeks behind schedule, compost corner needs some serious attention etc, etc.

This year that's not the picture that sticks in my mind. Now I see the curled up hosta leaves preparing to spread and amaze; I see the dogwood coming into flower for the first time since we planted it; I see the ornamental bed that we planted up last year really taking shape; I see the rampant rhubarb; and also the berries beginning to form on the blackcurrant bushes (must remember to net them soon, before the birds have a feast!).

What has changed? To be honest, the garden hasn't changed much - it's always a mixture of fruitfulness and the promise of ever more hard work; order and mess; achievement and disaster. I think I'm looking at it in a different way. This is the first spring that I've had my new camera, so I'm literally looking at life through a different lens. It's the first year that I've been blogging, so I'm looking at things from another perspective. But I think that the real change is summed up by Lins' comment on, my recent post. I'm trying to be more positive in outlook.

Aye, I know, I can still be as grumpy as the grumpiest person in grumpy-land; and as cycnical as the most cynical person in cynic city, but I'm trying to look for the positive in every situation.

With this in mind, I was delighted to find this in an e-mail that I received recently:

Why does spring have such a powerful attraction? This may, of course, be mainly a feature of seasons in the earth’s temperate zones. Yet it does speak of resurrection, new life, regeneration and renewal, of the dormant brought out into exuberant life. And our delight in spring is a delight in a new earth washed clean, a promise of a new heaven and a new earth that will be both glorious and familiar. And also, I hope, a delight in love! Praise him!

- Margaret Killingray (LICC)

As a kind of celebration, I'm going to post some more spring photos over the next week or so - some from our garden, some from walks - all from this year. I've started with my favourite daffodil (don't know what it's called) from our garden.