Relief

A damp misty start to a May bank holiday, but the rain of the last two nights feels like a relief after a dry April with no significant rainfall. I have been haunting plant stalls that pop up seasonally outside my local shops recently, treating myself to colourful bedding plants and interesting looking perennials that surely I can squeeze into my garden somewhere. When all else in life seems overwhelming, tend the garden. Watering my newly planted pots early in the morning or in mellow evening light has become a daily meditative process. The deal is simple, I give them good compost and enough water and they stay alive, each day I urge them on. This week it was petunias and antirrhinums from outside Bristol Sweetmart, precariously bungeed onto the back of my pannier rack ahead of the cycle home. The snapdragons conjure childhood memories of squeezing the flower heads to make the ‘dragons’ roar.

Last weekend I watched my neighbours patiently weeding rogue ox-eye daisies, muscari and clumps of grass out of their gravelled bed alongside their front garden path, making space for their neat and tidy Hostas. “We just want something low maintenance really” my neighbour said to me, eyeing up the wildness outside the front of my own house, and the source of many of those interloping ‘weeds’. I found myself offering the use of my green bin as a peace-offering. Left to my own devices I would let all my grass grow long, but in order to make it look intentional I have compromised by seeding the middle of the patch with wildflower seeds and then mowing around the edges. As well as ox-eye daisies (which have turned out to be slightly thuggish) this year there are poppies, yarrow and several other things I haven’t identified yet. One year an enormous and perfect sunflower grew in the middle of the lawn, probably from a seed dropped by a bird. It has never happened again since, but I live in hope. After inexplicably breaking two electric lawnmowers in a row, last year I bought myself an old-fashioned manual push mower, which makes a pleasing squee crunkle noise as I shove it along. It’s a level of technology I feel comfortable with, and is easy to repair. Right at the corner of the grass I find that an exuberant spray of buttercups has established itself, I hope they spread.

Last Friday my daughter’s final piece for GCSE Art & Design was completed, another reason to feel relieved, although there are other exams on the horizon, and plans for the bank holiday weekend were modest. So I was glad to walk through the woods this morning with a friend, heading down to the path along the river Avon. We updated each other on our various family sagas, breathing the damp earthy spring smells and stamping along paths scattered with hawthorn blossom. Then as we ambled along the river path, caught up in conversation, we noticed a small group of people gathered and watching something in the water by the opposite bank. “What is it?” we asked as we approached. “Otters!” whispered a man with binoculars gleefully, and handed them to me for a closer look. Sinuous forms, runs of bubbles on the surface, those distinctive shapes. I felt jubilant, a memory to treasure and store away. Although almost at the same time, guilt creeps in, just what are these poor creatures swimming in? Every river in England is polluted beyond legal limits, a sobering thought. That is the reality of interacting with the natural world in the twenty-first century, moments of absolute delight, tempered by confronting the impact of the Anthropocene.

Photo shows my valiant buttercups that have evaded the mower. This week I finished Craftlands, a really enjoyable read, I particularly liked the specialist vocabulary that accompanies each individual craft type. Also fascinating but definitely less joyous, I read Enshittification by Cory Doctorow. Definitely need to sink into a nice comforting novel after that...