Notes from the garden; There she grows!
From the safety of the supermarket to growing my own veg
Hello! Welcome to this section of my substack called ‘Notes from the garden’. I have long had a dream of growing my own food, but recently, growing plants to support wellbeing has become the more dominant idea in my mind, perhaps that’s a herbal garden to make a variety of teas, beautiful flowers that encourage pollinators, or foods rich in nutrients that I can harvest for soups and stews. Follow me as I go from supermarket shopper and absolute garden novice, to hopefully growing and creating. If you are a grower or a wannabe grower, I would love to hear your thoughts/tips/support in the comments. Anna xx
Here we go.
My first dive into growing.
Growing.
It sounds so wonderful doesn’t it? It hums with a kind of magic. The hum of the universe. A sound familiar to the faint buzz of bees in the summer, as they drunkenly stumble out of flowers. A reminder of a life beyond the confines of our computer screens and offices. I linger in this place of excitement and complete naivety at the work and knowledge it may take. In the summer, when I started to play with planting a few seeds, tending to the plants in a family garden, a neighbour commented that there really was nothing to it, just trial and error. Plant and water and see how you go.
If you have been with me since November, you will know that this substack is about my journey back to connection (you can read more about this here). The idea that this could be trial and error sends a lightening bolt to my perfectionist soul. This cultivation will be more than just planting a few seeds, it will be a relearning of everything I think I know. My life in the last 9 months has already been tipped upside down, and as I hunt for the pieces of who I once was, this seems a perfect time to start.
My father has terminal leukaemia. I need grounding, more than ever. And I know alot of people may say their Dad is the best, but mine really is. I don’t think I ever really embodied that phrase ‘world crashing down’ until the moment we received his diagnosis. You can read more about my journey through grief and the unknown in my other substack ‘Letters to my father’ but for now just know that it cemented my internal narrative. One that had been playing in my mind since the era of lockdowns; there must be more to life than this. It feels as if my life, and so many others are driven by money and jobs that don’t really mean anything but ultimately are the will of others. The soul itself remains trapped in an untapped cage, and follows the same roads of those before us. Without winning the lottery, I am not entirely sure how I may escape this, but the only call I can hear right now is to grow. After quitting my job, and facing the loss of my dad, the idea of sinking my hands into the Earth gives me the same reassurance others may have from hanging onto a rope dangling over a cliff. For now it feels as if it is the life raft I need. And so here we are.
Living in a top floor flat with little light leaves me with very few options to grow. After a few minutes of intense googling, community gardens flash up in the search. Hmmmm a communtiy garden….I could do that. It will allow me to dip my toe into the water, I tell myself, I don’t have to fully commit. A trick I like to play on my brain which is so adverse to change, in the hope when I start it will stick. According to my research, community gardening began in the 19th century when the British Government gave land to those with fewer means to enable them to cultivate their own food. Although it seems bizarre to me that this is the first reference I find. The government cannot lay claim to this phenomenon of community. For centuries, families and villages have worked together to plough, toil and harvest the land. Including my own. I am almost embarrassed to admit that on my paternal side my family were all farmers, yet I barely know how to hold a rake (or know what it does. Leaf gathering maybe?).
This term gardening that I seem to be throwing around, barely seems to do justice to what I really know I am attempting; diving into a lineage that goes beyond meat and bones. My embarrassment extends beyond letting down my ancestry, but also the fabric of my being, and what it means to be human.
I have always been one to hastily check packets for sell by dates before using them, scrubbing even supermarket veg clean despite the pre washing claims on the carefully crafted plastic packaging. I have seen and pretended to love a farmers market. Carrots freshly pulled from the ground, covered in soil, carrot tops flopping over, fronds of extraordinary lengths. Feeling doubt that I would eat something so covered in dirt. I have lost faith in what should come so naturally to me. I have lost faith in the ground, the sunlight, the greenery that grows. It as if I have lost all my senses.
I read once that scientific experiments into human senses showed that they developed extensively the longer humans were left out in the (metaphorical) cold. Individuals forced to use them in the depths of forests, when technology was ripped from them. A quick google scholar search finds no such research, it might require more excavating. Equally, these could be old wives tales, anecdotes, even fantasy and nothing more. But my gut tells me it is not. Lately I have felt that exact magic that extending ones senses can bring. I have felt the tingle in my toes, an alertness to the sounds and sensations beyond my own body. What if this magic is simply to regain ones place in the universe? To realise that we actually matter to the turning of the world, and to the plots that we grow? It is almost fascinating and bleak how we have lost our way so much. Coming back to myself is more than just yoga, it is more than dusty books and newspaper clippings of my family from the local library. It is a souls remembrance of the earth and its cycles and my place within it. And I must learn to trust again. Trust the very senses I was born with. Trust the Earth and what she offers, and an inner knowing that exists within an ecological system mirroring something within myself that has long gone untapped.
How absurd it is that I should trust shop bought veg, with no idea where it is from, how it has been grown or processed, over eating vegetables from my own garden. There is a sinister side to this economical existence we live in, where our faith in the land and ourselves has been disintegrated so we continue to rely on a broken system we can seemingly never escape.
My first attempts at growing a few years ago were some radishes from a friend at work, hastily buried into small plastic trays and forgotten about. There were tropical plants bought from fancy online shops, left to dry for months but thankfully surviving due to the unique microclimate of a cheap London rental. But, in January, I made a vow to myself, the same vow I had made the 4 years previous, that I would learn to grow. This time it has stuck. When I think about it the magic tingle starts again, and I have to tell myself that the story I currently hold of myself can change. Maybe to others this idea of transformation through a small garden plot sounds silly, but if you’re reading this I think you get it too.
Every other Saturday, a local community garden is offering a gardening club. A safe way to start. When spring starts, there is talk it will become weekly. The nerves I felt at joining this community were overwhelming. This was a garden club for novices. But fears of unworthiness rose in me, like it often does in us humans. So I watched from the side-lines for a while, stalking their social media channels, driving by on a Sunday, peering through the fences on a long and unnecessary walking detour, until finally I plucked up the courage to enter.
Opening the gate for the first time felt like opening the wardrobe to Narnia. The gates were an emerald green, and a shiny silver metal had been twisted into letters, and shapes, depicting a garden of flowers and bees. I was Lucy. Peeking in, already feeling the flutter of joy in my heart. The plots of yet to be grown vegetables, the compost heaps slowly stirring death back into life, forced rhubarb poking its head out as if asking to be harvested was as magical to me as the snow capped fir trees of a brand new world where all dreams seem possible.
And this opening of the gate is where this letter shall stop for today….because the first visit. Wow. It deserves an entire newsletter of its own. If you are keen to follow along this journey with me do click and subscribe, and share this article with others who may also be interested in how the novice growing will go.
I would love to hear your own hopes and dreams for your future garden, what has prevented you and what still prevents you from growing. I hope together we may eradicate some of those fears and relearn this life together.
Love, and hopefully, very soon, flowers (or maybe herbal teas).
Anna
xxx
I couldn’t wait to listen any longer. Sat with my eyes closed in my own garden, listening, you’ve transported me to your own sense of wonderment. And it’s made me question… perhaps I can grow something too?
So looking forward to following along your journey - I’m very excited for you!
Like everyone else I'm so excited for your new garden, too. It really never stops being a magical thing, but it's that first garden that is the most magic. I'm with you on being nervous to join a gardening group or class but I bet it would make gardening so much more fun, to have a community around you, as you will in your new garden. Can't wait to follow along. :)