The garden is a place of peace. My garden is a chaos garden, but in amongst it there is harmony.
Every year I am impatiently waiting for the monsoon season to end and expect to taste our ‘winter’ on the air come the end of March. I laugh at myself. The seasons have changed from what I remember as a kid when the first sign of summer was a storm in November. Now we often don’t get them until the end of January. The Wet starts later and clings on later.
I take a moment to reflect here. Last night I was scrolling through conversations on my phone. March 2024 I was on top of the world. I recall standing in our backyard with the Mr and had found peace in that hot, sticky, humid afternoon. For the first time in a long time, I was at peace.
April 2024 hit us like a freight train, ripping that peace out from underneath us. The cancer had returned. Found during a fairly routine scan. A miracle it was found so early, really. It was automatically stage 2 as it had metastasised to a lymph node. 50% of head and neck patients present with this on discovery, or so I’ve heard.
I do not want to go into the turmoil of our lives from April to August of that year. It was horrific and cruel and a terribly long and lonely journey that somehow, we made it through.
He made it through to the other side with radical surgery, a 20-day stay in hospital, 8 days of being monitored by me, and then home.
Home
Our abode is humble, a tiny block house on a decent block of land in suburbia. It’s cramped and untidy, the interior is hella dated and in dire need of refresh, and previous owners let it deteriorate to the point where serious renovations are needed.
But it is our castle, where our three cats, a tank of tropical fish, ourselves, and now our two chickens live. Home is where you settle into the comfort of your routine, where the couch has moulded to your bum, your bed and pillow are a warm cradle, and the familiarity of your things engulf you.
Gardening brings us both peace. There is joy in wandering among the flowers and trees, smelling the fresh air, watching the insects and birds go about their lives. Without it, I don’t think either of us would be in as good a frame of mind as we are.
It’s the small magics of the natural world. A reminder that you are part of something much larger than yourself.
We dig the soil, and rip the weeds, and find joy in watching Jessie cat chill out on the grass. There is science behind the calming effect of gardening, and I, ever the curious mind, could write a lot about it. But it is the creative side that wants to shine through here. We talk of the avocados we will harvest, the new beds we will put in, and wonder what the next dahlia to bloom will be. It is peace we find there. And somehow, my faith that it will all work itself out in the end is renewed in our garden.
Leave a Comment