the illusion of having it all

on mothering, desire and why I'm clearing the way

I wrote a list of things I had to do. I found sixty-three.
Then I wrote another list of things I wanted to do.
I found two – write and mother my children.

Toni Morrison

Somehow, this weekend I managed to get nearly ten hours out in the garden. The weather was dry, the children happy to be at home and flitting in and out of the house, they didn’t seem to need me too much. So I just kept at it for hour after delicious hour.

I spent most of my time doing the heavier manual tasks that need doing before the spring growth gets going in earnest; hauling the snapped and sodden bulrushes out of the pond, clearing the small stream that trickles into and out of it, sweeping mounds and mounds of wet leaves from the sides of the long lane that leads to our house. I looked a little like this for most of the time:

Illustration by Axel Scheffler in Julia Donaldson’s Room on the Broom

When I’m gardening, I often pop ear pods in and listen to a podcast or audiobook, but this weekend I just did not want any more input. I wanted my brain to cease absorbing, computing, learning. I wanted to think of very little, bar what task I had to do next, where I should place my foot in the pond sludge, how much could I fit in my (new, shiny, yellow-wheeled!) wheelbarrow before it spilled over.

isn’t she a beauty?!

I think of what I’ve been doing in the garden over the last month as ‘structural work’. Yes, there are little nudges of colour and growth appearing in the beds and on the trees, but my garden is still a skeleton. When it is like this, I can learn how it is held together, how it is stitched, I can get to know its bones.