Well, we’re fourteen million weeks into lockdown. You’ve got a spare saucepan installed by the front door so you can go and dutifully clang it every Thursday at 8pm. Everyone’s sick to death of sourdough and Duolingo and Zoom. And, never one to defy a national fad: I’ve become some sort of horticultural maniac.
I used to be able to sit in the garden (anywhere, in fact) not doing anything for ages. Weeks, in fact. Sure, I might have plucked a rogue dandelion from the rose garden before settling down on my picnic rug with a big hat and a G&T, like Margot from The Good Life. I planted and watered those free 'Little Garden' seedlings that Marks and Spencer handed out earlier this year, marvelling at how green-fingered I was. Now, though, I am a woman possessed. I can manage five minutes of devoted relaxing before a cheeky little thistle catches my eye and I’m off again, planting and deadheading and sweeping. Weeds be warned. In true Dig For Victory spirit, cabbages, onions, radishes carrots, beetroot, spring onions, and potatoes have been planted. Twenty fruit trees have been weeded and lovingly snipped - and jam jars have been sterilised in readiness. I spent two hours the other morning batch-washing gravel in a bucket. Twenty-nine rose trees have been carefully pruned. All twenty-nine have scratched me. Outdoor furniture has been stained (and so have my wellies). The sound of the delivery van bringing panels of trellis and lobelia plants and grow-bags is music to my ears. I’ve not yet watched Gardeners’ World but I feel it coming. I don’t know why the lockdown gardening madness has gripped me. It’s not like I’ve suddenly been robbed of other things to do - I am (so I’m sometimes reminded) a Masters student and I’m meant to be writing a dissertation on something at some point. German. It’s definitely about something German. And lockdown hasn’t stolen away my favourite hobbies (sitting down, listening to Classic FM, drinking wine, trying to read Thomas Hardy) but I’ve certainly been bitten by the gardening bug. And not the delicate, Miss Marple kind of gardening, ‘ooh, I’ll just pop a petunia in there, then return to the house for Earl Grey and scones’. Oh, no. I’m talking two pairs of gauntlets, twigs in my hair, yanking nettles and brambles out by the root, roaring like a warrior. So maybe it’s a primal thing? What it certainly is, is addictive. It’s the perfect storm: the dopamine hit of forking up a weed that has been taking the mick, looking with pride at your work, and then starting all over again because it. Never. Ever. Ends. It’s like that Greek bloke pushing the boulder up the hill, but with begonias. Big gardens are all well and good but by the time you’ve been round and weeded every inch, the bit you started with has reverted to something like the devil’s snare in Harry Potter. Oh, and apparently gardening counts as exercise which is meant to be good for you but I’ve never done any research of my own to confirm. Will report back. And a brief follow-up to my last post, in case anyone happened to be curious - I still, STILL, cannot smell. However I have decided it is churlish and self-pitying to hold off on all hedonistic pursuits until I'm back to 100% sensory capacity - if you are what you eat, I am currently a tub of ice cream tinged with Malbec.
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The official website of Yorkshire-made, Oxford-based writer Isabel Parkinson. Want fewer words and more pics? Follow me on Instagram!
(Header Photo: Radcliffe Camera, Oxford - Isabel Parkinson 2016)
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