Feeling seasonal
As the sun retreats, I am reminded that I am also a seasonal creature, no matter how much our highly complicated human social world often requires us to ignore this fact. In the past week, as well as plenty of wonderful nature experiences, honing my powers of noticing and observing, I was also entangled in very human systems of bureaucracy, which are much less joyful. And just as nature writing cannot ignore the climate crisis, so I can not ignore feeling buffeted by the swirling media and political storm surrounding the rise in diagnoses of autism and ADHD amongst young people. All these years we have spent loving and parenting our daughter, and when she was diagnosed as autistic at 15 it was a relief to have finally reached some kind of consensus. A cross-disciplinary panel of experts had officially decreed that she showed “a pattern of significant differences” in the dry language of report writing. This current ‘overdiagnosis’ debate just makes me feel tired and weary. Yet more people who haven’t met my daughter are deciding whether she deserves support, while we in our small quiet family are just working on living and moving through the world. Friends ask me how things are going now that she’s back in mainstream college, and I smile and nod, whilst thinking privately that it’s a very complicated question to answer. She shows me her new sketchbook for A-Level Art, pages of creative work, and I am so proud of her. I hope she knows that I am proud of everything that she does, and always have been.
On Fridays I have decided to return to Grow Wilder where I completed the Grow Leader course earlier this year. I wrote about it back in February here. Neither of the early years settings I work at are open on a Friday, so it leaves space for some volunteer time. I know where I’m happiest, and it’s often in the mud. Last week we arrived, drank coffee and perused the typed list of jobs in the kitchen, happy to self-organise. Many of the other volunteers are retirees, unsurprisingly they make up a sizeable proportion of the volunteer workforce, but there were a few other younger women who were also new starters. I was delighted to be reunited with R who is also a Grow Leader graduate and together we chose weeding the raspberry canes, which were looking completely swamped. It was so immensely satisfying grubbing up white tuberous roots of bindweed and clumps of couch grass. Tenacious perennial weeds like this are all deposited in the Pile of Doom, and are kept strictly apart from the main compost bins and dead hedges.
Whilst grabbing and pulling weeds, I noticed a flash of movement, a small brown body wriggling to escape. A small newt! I genuinely gasped with delight. Except for a long ago school trip with pond-dipping activities, I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen one in the wild. It burrowed itself into undergrowth too quickly for me to photograph it, but I think it may have been a smooth newt (Lissotriton vulgaris), probably looking for a place to overwinter. At lunchtime R told me about a medieval belief that toads grew a rare jewel called bufonite in their heads, and that these toadstones would be set into rings and worn to protect against poisoning. More recent analysis has shown bufonite to be a type of fossillised fish tooth. What pleased me most about this conversation was that R said “I knew you’d be interested to know this”, and, of course, I was! It is such a good feeling to find people who understand you, that there are places where you belong. Weeding also turned up treasure in the form of free plants for my garden, and I rescued a mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris). This has distinctive foliage with a silvery underside, hence the Latin name of Artemisia. My mind goes to the Greek goddess Artemis the hunter, a protector of young girls and linked to the moon. She is a famous steadfast virgin, a woman meeting the world on her own terms.
Later sheltering from a brief rain shower, a seasoned volunteer showed us round one of the polytunnels. The warm basil-scented space was still bursting with life, draped with vines of cucamelon, riots of nasturtium, as well as tomatoes, chilli, aubergine and lots of herbs. We gathered chillis to take home and opened papery lanterns of physalis (cape gooseberry), a burst of perfect ripeness and tartness in the mouth. These moments are the things I wish to remember, and I’m happy to find them shining out in my morning pages, as well as thrashing out minor and major irritations with each swipe of my pen. My morning pages also help me identify just why I am finding my interactions with officialdom so frustrating at the moment, to go beyond my tetchiness. It is not just each incidence of an electronic form, or chatbot, or verification of identity, it is what these represent. We’re told that this is part of making services more efficient, but it’s hard to avoid the worry that this in fact represents the enshittification of public services, it’s about saving money because there is apparently not enough of it around to pay for the things we all need. No wonder I find myself seeking out moments of wonder in the natural world, anyone would be depressed.
I learnt a long time ago that leading by example was often the most effective way of teaching my children. As I write, as I decide what aspects of life I would like to draw attention to, I hope I am showing them that there are many ways of being in the world. That it’s OK to be quiet sometimes, it’s OK to be interested in esoteric knowledge about amphibian-related folklore, that life is wildly confusing, but that we find things to help us muddle through, and there are people who make us feel we belong.
Photo shows some glorious French marigolds, planted to attract pollinators (successfully as you can see) in the Grow Wilder polytunnel. This week I read The Strangers by Naomi Alderman: a grief memoir mingled with odd sci-fi ish story about these mysterious creatures called ‘mimmoths’, first captured on a garden wildlife camera and then sighted all over the world. The grief is so real and raw and well-expressed, that sense of not being able to hold yourself together, doubting your own sanity. Alderman writes in the aftermath of her mother’s death, but also the loss of countless pregnancies, her babies diagnosed in utero with chromosomal disorders incompatible with life. It's a book that will stay with me.
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