Taexalia

wild.life

Life Death Rebirth

Dandelion Clock

On the one hand I feel overwhelmed by pandemic obsession with averting mortality...

The latest during the ad break in a film where the advertising bombarded me with a bunch of negativity and told me what I should be doing so that I won't grow old looking. That gem was followed by a proclamation that women could beat nature. I think it was a single use throw-away sanitary product.

I suppose if you look at it a bit squinty you could agree that women could beat nature with their repeated use of a product that clogs landfills, pollutes rivers and may or may not subject their very intimate skin to harsh and poisonous chemicals. Beat nature into ill-health, I mean.

Let us deny mortality, deny our womanhood and deny our environment a breathing space - meanwhile a corporation or two reels in the money as we succumb to the idea that we can save ourselves by shopping and consuming and producing waste.

Hmm.

Then other times I feel like I am being bombarded with mortality and I find myself wanting to resist that life is so. I want to find a way to stop the little deaths, to control something that is much bigger than me. I wince and maybe I utter a word or two and owe a penny or a pound to the imaginary swear box. I feel a little anguish as I contemplate a failure...

My garden grows no matter whether I decide what will grow in a space, or leave it to the weed realm. My garden wanes whether I tend it well or leave it to the elements. Somewhere in there is a balance that I am constantly seeking and may never find.

When the snails came by the hundred, I took out their favourite shrubby home. Now they come in ones and twos from places I'll never know and they eat my Million Bells and Pansies - little cheerful flowers that I planted as a statement of making the garden ours. The snails don 't care about statements and human territory, they like to eat and they like to eat succulent and tended plants rather than scrawny weed seedlings.

And yet when I spotted a snail crawling out in the heat and blistering sunshine, I felt a pang of worry that it might get sunburn.

When the Goldfinches appeared with their fluffy young, I put out "Nyger Seed" knowing it was their favourite delicacy. I watched in glee as the colourful little birds ate from the feeder and delicately fed their young. I smiled when the birds would congregate on the phone wires above me and chatter at me trying to make me skedaddle so they could eat in peace.

Yet the Goldfinches are untidy eaters and they spread the tiny seeds across the garden. I wonder how much actually gets eaten, and I smirk at the pretty name for the seeds which belies the fact I am now weeding hundreds of tiny thistle seedlings from my veg patch.

Someone suggests I do something about the cats who eat some of the little birds, but I don't own any cats and even if I did - who ever knew how to control a cat? The cats are welcome, I think, and it isn't like they use my garden as a toilet.

Cats are mystical, tuned in, deviant creatures - for almost as soon as I have uttered the claim, the little tell-tale piles start appearing in my plots. A tidy row of radish seedlings is the first victim and some of the plants are found limp amongst the uneven soiled soil.

I sigh and then a feline wanders into reach and it is pointless to speculate on the identity of the radish wrecking cat, or even to blame the cat for simply being a cat. I tickle him behind the ears and along his belly in just the way he likes, and I ponder cat defences that will save our dinners without banishing cats (who do scare away brassica eating pigeons) entirely.

Win some, lose some and let go of that which I can't change... or get creative about how I might balance things a little more in my favour next time...

The cycle turns and somewhere another seed begins to germinate...

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Posted on July 1, 2009 in Green Fingers, Ponderings.

One Response to “Life Death Rebirth”

  1. Imelda says:
    July 22, 2009 at 2:53 pm

    I love the way you put all this. I’ve neglected my garden badly the past year or more, and am being rewarded with strange gifts. I’ve been noticing how forgiving a garden can be of a spell of benign neglect. The daylilies are doing wonderful things, and the roses. The astilbe just happily pushed up through the remains of last year’s dead heads. And now, a mystery plant has turned out to be a magnificent yarrow-type plant with round flower-heads that the bees just love. I haven’t the heart to root it out, I’m enjoying it so much.
    [rq=130740,0,blog][/rq]Re-connecting

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