Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Frosty mornings hung on through the month of May. Spring was wintry, we couldn’t shake the grip of cold; the switch into heat has been sudden, and equally stubborn. At Paddock Garden the grass has been cut and all the stubble is biscuity-beige. If you look closely there is green underneath- the earth here is rich, though clay-thick in places, and not everything is nourished. We study the leafless plum and cherry saplings wondering what we did wrong, whether the allelopathic ash trees have told them ‘you can't grow here’ or a pest or a disease or drought overcame them? Will they resurge? We won’t know for sure till winter returns. It feels at first like a condemnation but of course it is only part of our educational gambling. All the other trees are thriving, even the ones near swallowed by brambles in the bottom hedge. There are cherries, plums, pears, and apples in miniature, swelling out of slender wood. Where the tractor couldn’t reach the grasses are eye height, tipped with...

Dear Readers, Here we are! Not lost, just busy, just tired, just taking a moment to sit with our shared flask of ginger tea, wiping our snotty noses, watching winter and spring swing around in their season-switching dance. Hard frost crackles, soft petals bloom. We had been busy with the old art of hedge laying, busy sorting and tidying the felled trunks, branches, and twigs. There are heaps and stacks and bundles - these boundaries have been untouched for decades - but birds are beginning to gather materials for nests, heralding the end of our hedgework for a while. Our thoughts have turned to The Planting Plan, so we pace around measuring canopy distances before going home to pour over the map, again, again.   Two plum trees wait in pots, they have their spots marked. Everything else is a maybe. Down along the iron fence are lines and lines of daffodils, all in bud. Only one has opened, a miniature narcissus staring bravely up at the big world. We are inspired of course, t...

‘1/1/22 Saturday Last night just before midnight, we strolled down the dark lane, wine glasses in hand; spotted constellations, watched distant fireworks. This morning Dog had done several splats of foulness on the living room carpet. HNY! Also this morning: In bed, chinking coffee cups, we say- what will this year bring? We hope it’s a track and a toilet shed.’ Well, we have a track on our land, all the way from top to bottom gate. It’s not as finely finished as we’d hoped, but it is here. We have a toilet shed, and it’s not the quality lumber we had hoped for, but it is built, and it will suffice. Everything is layering up, however slow or wonky: up! There were, too, events that we did not foresee or hope for. The van engine blew up. We can’t fix it. No one wishes to buy it, at least not yet. It will be utilised as a winter shelter on our land until a better idea/miracle arrives. A painful chunk of land fund went to buy a replacement vehicle, which is much cheaper to run so there is...

30/6/22, A Thursday. Yesterday’s forecast suggested ‘light rain’ but the clouds clearly had not paid that much attention. Yesterday’s washing is sagging on the line, dripping like it's been dropped in a pond. We did not check the weather this morning; we drank our coffee, listened to the birds shrill, and lest this sound too much of a rural idyll, also scrolled our phones for emails and social media whatevers. We speak to each other too, Mr and I. This morning’s chat ruled out repurposing old carpets for suppressing weeds on the bare-earth areas on our land, due to possible contamination of the soil and transportation cost. We chose terram, a geotextile fabric, instead, which we will buy new but be able to reuse. We tog up for a land trip (which for me includes flower earrings, a pretty hair tie, maybe a polka-dot scarf; this is part of my fun-on-the-land policy, which in turn is part of preventing burnout), taking a tape measure to check how much terram to purchase. At the land...

7/5/22 Saturday I am raring to be back to work shenanigans. Little Care Client has not been well though, so she is having a quiet sleepy day. We make do with a YouTube beach; the garden pots are watered, the window ajar, the washing machine rumbling. Mr is at Paddock Garden clearing the storm-felled ash, ready for track building times. As is usual, we are not sure when our contractor will appear. It's a little frustrating mixed with the excitement of surprise. 8/5/22 Sunday Coffee in bed, listening to birdsong, peering at weather forecasts. Watered the polytunnel which seems untenanted since last week’s pest control clearance. It will soon fill up: lulls and excess is how it rolls. My drive to work starts sunny; gathers mist from Bodmin onwards. My legs are cold but my dress has a bright floral print, my scarf is cobalt blue, my shoes are giraffe print and fun. At work I have shopping chores - batteries for the noisy toys little Care Client loves the best, and canes for her pea...

5/3/22 Saturday St Piran’s Day Morning: frost on the greenery as far as the eye can see. Mr gets wrapped up ready for his hedge laying course, I get coffee-ed up ready to take Grandchildren 6 & 7 to the Eden Project for the World Pasty Championships: smug as I have pre-bought our pasties to avoid queueing. Afternoon: it is sheltered in the Eden valley, cold in the shadows, warm in the sun. Me, G6, and G7 sit on a bench and eat our pasties. (We are early because Granma’s fluid intake has reached capacity. In the rush to the loos, Granma also forgot to note in which car park the car was hastily abandoned, or even in which area- is it Lime? Plum? Banana? Ah well, at least my trousers are dry, and none of us are hungry or stuck in a queue.) The little ones are fun, in spite of being entirely uninterested in the entertainments of pasty challenges or live music. We whizz around the Mediterranean Dome, and the Tropics (wow that leaf is freaking massive, says G6; maffiv! echoes G7) we queu...

22/1/22 Saturday Frostless and still, this morning. Garden stationary, like statuary. We are not: there is writing, land work, and home improvements in motion. There’s a spark, a waking up. The doomsday clock chugs, the human world sits like a frog in heating water, yet here our small world whispers hope. ‘The secret of change,’ Socrates said, ‘is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.’ Mr plans to go to the land, I will hear his tales of today when I get home. I have come to work where Saturday is hydrotherapy day, a half-hour session with the little warm salt pool to ourselves. We had a slot after the newborn class; relaxed vibe; and before a party of 8 yr olds; disco vibe.  23/1/22 Sunday Luckily I set an alarm or we might still be asleep, and after a sober night too. Blaming the cold for making our bodies hibernate. At work, a YouTube fire flickers in a stone surround: cold out, cosy in. The flat seems chilly so I put the real-life heaters...