Bird song with your morning coffee.

Not that many years ago I was the person who did not understand the likes of gardening, sewing and baking. I could not tally the investment required for the limited benefit I could see from it. Why spend so much time in an activity when you could pay someone to do that thing for you?

A fair bit of life down the line and I am slowly being converted.

The beauty is in the journey. It is in the patience. It is in the deep breathing. It is in the toil and the learning. It is for delivering on the theory that the whole is greater than the sum of all parts.

A bought plant may be beautiful, but the feeling that I get from one that I nurtured from a cutting, or a seed, is on another level. It has my heart as it flowers, however briefly. I track the seasons by its rhythm.

The look on my daughters face as she twirls in a dress I made from an old skirt of mine she wished she could fit in to? Priceless. She doesn’t see the shoddy stitching by someone who last had a half hour of tutelage 32 years previously. She sees her dream suddenly turned reality after just one fitful sleep. You cannot look at that girls face and not think every pin-prick was worth it.

The potatoes and spinach, going from garden to pan (via washing, naturally), make lunch a little tastier, and in some ways a little easier in the moment. I love nipping out to the garden to decide what’s for lunch. I don’t think I’m far enough along the journey to understand the why of that yet.

The potatoes didn’t provide a large crop this time, 4 portions at the most, but the point I noticed was that I was thinking ‘this time’. We will be replanting, and we will laugh about what fate, and the weather, may bring us.

I am exploring, learning slowly. Organically, you might say. I am not reading books or watching programmes. I am planting and seeing what happens. I am being drawn in.

I want more raised beds next year because I am developing my understanding of what I can grow and what is struggling. I am beginning to understand how much space each plant craves. We are all individuals after all and personal space is a personal thing.

Nothing delicate will survive here, we are planters and leavers. I am early in my journey and am spinning too many of life’s plates. I don't have the time or patience for items that require more effort. I still do not understand annual plants. I will only be planting perennials. I cannot grasp paying for plants that last just one season if they have not ended up on my plate. I want to watch them grow, season by season. I want to be invested. It may well be the time of my life. I am aging and seeing things differently. It could be the period in my life and the challenges that have been put before me. Perhaps it's about seeing the world differently after becoming a mother.

I began baking for my daughter. I use the term tentatively. We tread very well-worn routes and we shy away from recipes that demand those fancy ingredients. We haven’t the patience for delicate recipes that require constant attention. It must survive badly time toilet visits and a heavy handed ingredient addition (or one completely forgotten, to be honest).

There is joy in sharing the experience, without doubt, but I am finding that it is not just about enjoying these activities, it is about benefitting from them. I know, because I am slowly increasing the time that I spend alone focused on them. They are changing the pattern of my days.

In a busy life, with so much to think about and so much to do, they are giving me small moments of pause. Like a walk in the sunshine, they are giving me time to really breathe in life. I have neglected that need over time and am the worse for it.

So, at this point, please excuse me whilst I nip out to replace the bird seed for tomorrows early visitors.

You can learn a million useful things in your time of academic education and in your hard-grafted career, but why does no one tell you that there’s nothing like bird song with your morning coffee?

Find your times to breathe. You will thank yourself for it. It has taken me too long to find mine.

#highcroftwriting #words #gardening #baking #sewing #slowerpace #journey #personaljourney #birdsong #coffee