What is a garden for?

I've spent some frustrating hours in my garden recently, despairing at the number of insects that seem to be ruining the plants. Plum aphids have meant barely any edible fruit on my Victoria Plum tree for the last three years, despite the tree itself having grown and thrived. The blueberry plant is now the size of a tree but I've had seven blueberries in the last two seasons, because aphids cover the leaves with their eggs. They and their offspring then eat everything in sight.

Spiders are making cobweb bridges between every surface, often overnight. Snail and slug trails might twinkle in the moonlight but they look less appealing in the daytime. There are ants a plenty too; I even found what I assume was a wood ant making a pile of sawdust out of the leg of an old table.

Weeds too see our garden as a premium site; though we are nettle-free, brambles grow everywhere, which makes gardening a spiky challenge. Ivy and holly thrive too. It's great living in a house that was built on the site of an orchard because the soil is lovely, but everything grows well, whether you want it to or not.

This season, we have the added joy of a robin nesting in the barbecue. OK, so we can't barbecue till they move out, but watching the parents dashing in and out with mouths full of insects is a joy.

And seeing that made me realise something. If we didn't have all those insects, the birds that visit our garden wouldn't have food for their young. Does it matter that the hedge has lace where there should be leaves, when I know that the creature that ate the leaves will feed my young robins?

I am lucky enough to have over twenty species of birds visit my garden , all of whom feast on both the food I leave out for them and the insects that eat my plants.

So what is a garden for?

For me, I now know. It's a haven for wildlife that I can share.

And that makes me happy.

Is this OK nowadays?

I am somewhat saddened by the world at the moment. When bad things happen, there is an outpouring of grief, shock, anger and disbelief. Communities, be it local or global, come together to share their emotions and try to make sense of what has occurred.

But some people seem to think it's all right to use bad things as a way of making a point and seem to dispense with expressing any kind of emotion about the tragedy.  

Remember how it felt when a political aide said that September 11th was a good day to bury bad news? I found that a shocking response to the unbelievable sight of planes being used as weapons. "Screw what's happened. Let's just get some benefit from it", the aide seemed to be saying.

Isn't it just as bad to use current tragedies to make a political point?

Or is the world now such a cynical place that every news item is there just to be added to the "And this proves my point" bucket or to be ignored because it disproves a belief?

I go back to something that I don't remember being taught, but I certainly associate with the sentiment of my upbringing:

"If you can't think of anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

And as I've got older, I appreciate Abraham Lincoln's phrase:

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt".

Though I'm sure my critics will feel that this post as proof of the latter.

At least Tim Peake is back safely from his travels. Now there is some news to celebrate.

You gotta friend...but have you?

Friendship in the world we live in seems different to what it used to be. But is different better?

The word friend used to mean someone you hung out with. A close friend was someone who shared your secrets and your lipstick. Friends were the people around you - the wider circle of those who inhabited the same part of the world as you. When you were a teenager, it was your school friends and those who lived nearby. When you went to work, your circle widened to include those in your department.

Not that all of these people were your friends. There would always be people you didn't like or who didn't like you. But friendship was primarily a physical thing.

Now you can have friends anywhere. They live in a virtual world, liking or ignoring the selfies you post of FB or Instagram. They can make comment on your life without consequence but so can you, knowing you wouldn't say it to their face but hey, everyone does it. You can kid yourself that a celebrity likes you because they re-tweeted your latest witticism.

People are cruel on these sites, not just through what they say or do but in subtler ways. If you post up a tale of your latest woes, is it worse if someone is unsympathetic or if they ignore you? How many posts disappear when the Like count isn't up to the mark? Surely that must heighten the sense of not belonging?

And so what if you have 500 "friends"? If there's no-one there to give you a hug when you're low or laugh with you at life's misfortunes, then do the platitudes of the 500 make up for that? Is it better than nothing? Or does it serve to maintain the illusion of friendship in today's world?

Because somehow it doesn't seem quite real. And surely a step away from reality is not a good direction to go in?

Or is it?

Yo ho ho

It's easy to get so caught up in the craziness of Christmas that you forget what's important to you.

 

For some, Christmas is about the religious festival. For others, it's about spending time with family and friends. For many, it can be a time of loneliness as it feels as though the rest of the world is partying when you feel you have nothing to celebrate.

 

I think it's a chance to take stock, to think about what's happened since you last celebrated Christmas and decide if you're happy with how the year has panned out.

 

Have you appreciated those around you? Been grateful that you have loved ones who share your world? Have you given back some of the joy and luck you've received?

 

Or have you been too caught up the everyday hassles of work and home life?

 

I know I am very lucky that I have writing as my way of escaping the frustrations of life. I can enter a different world and the pressures of the everyday are forgotten. Once the pressure has dissipated, I seem to be more aware of  how lucky I am, to be blessed with a partner, family and friends who are there for me.

 

I hope you get the chance to take five minutes out of your busy December schedule to count your blessings and be thankful for what you have.

 

Wishing you all a very happy and peaceful Christmas.

Ten things that reconnect me with my younger self

There are some things that make me feel the same as I did when I was young and when I say young, I mean between the age of nine and thirteen. The sight, smell or thought instantly reconnects me to the child that still lives within.

Here are some of my time shift experiences:

1.       The smell of just-cut grass. I know for a lot of people smelling new-mown grass is a positive experience as it reminds them of summer holidays and sunshine, but for me it fills me with the dread of school sports. Somehow it’s easier to fake sporting capability in winter; you can just whack anything that comes into range with your hockey stick. With athletics and tennis, there’s no place to hide.

2.       Love Hearts. I can’t eat a packet of Love Hearts without remembering the joy of getting a sweet with a message that meant I was going to be with the love of my life.  Even if all the sweet said was that I was cute, it still made me feel better. And still makes me feel better now.

3.       Rubik’s cube. Every time I see the cube, I still remember some of the moves to get the colours to line up. Not all of them, though. Just enough to make me realise I’m not interested in solving it, the same as I felt when I saw all the true nerds clicking away at it.

4.       Conkers. I may be nearly fifty but the sight of a fresh conker on the ground still makes my heart soar, thinking I’ve found the one that no-one else can conquer. Nowadays, my prize conker will just sit on a shelf for a few months before my unsentimental side throws it away during a de-cluttering session. But there’s always next autumn.

5.       The Two Ronnies. If I catch a glimpse of one of their programmes on Gold, it transports me back to Saturday nights in front of the telly. When there were only three channels but somehow there was still more to watch than there is today. And the whole family would sit and watch. And we’d all be laughing at the same things. Happy days.

6.       Top Trumps. Seeing a pack of Top Trumps takes me back to playing the game with my brothers. The only pack we had was about motorcycles. Most of the facts meant nothing to me (I still don’t know what a Wankel rotary engine is). I guess it was special because I could play the game with my elder brothers. Not many games went across the gender and age boundary.

7.       Christmas Radio Times. A highlight of advent (along with watching John Noakes make a pig’s ear of building an advent crown out of tinsel and coat hangers). The anticipation of what would be on the telly over the Christmas holidays has never left me. And it’s only 165 sleeps till Christmas 2015 J

8.       A pile of Lego. While I admit to buying Lego kits, they’re not as much fun as a pile of random Lego without instructions. I’m sure the pile we had at home only had a few windows as the special items, so I only ever built a house, but the hours of fun from that plastic bag full of plastic was magical.

9.       Multi-coloured biros – did you know they still make biros that have four inks? You flick down the little switch and suddenly it’s a red pen, then a blue one, then a green one, then a black one. Genius. And I felt like I was such a hip kid when I whipped mine out of my pencil case. Still do, actually.

10.    Fairy Liquid. Trust me, if you ever want to be transported back to childhood, just use original Fairy Liquid. The smell takes you back to a time when your Mum made up bubble mixture instead of buying it. Of course, if the ratio of water to Fairy wasn’t right, it didn’t make bubbles. But it was great fun trying.

Why not take a moment to reconnect with your younger self today? I reckon it’s some of the best therapy going.  

Jane

Crisis? What Crisis?

At the age of 49, I’m probably overdue my mid-life crisis. So I pondered whether that meant I was having the opposite of a crisis. But what is the opposite of crisis? The thesaurus offers a plethora of choices - advantage, agreement, benefit, blessing, breakthrough, happiness, miracle, peace, solution, success - but none quite hit the spot for me.

The word crisis comes from the Greek term “krisis” which in 1425 meant the turning point of a disease. So in a mid-life crisis, the disease must be life. And the turning point is presumably when you look back at your life and realise there’s more behind you than in front of you. So I suppose I am past that point.

Don’t get me wrong – there are some things about being older that make me a bit grumpy.  I have what people call laughter lines but nothing is that funny. The brain connections don’t always fire an answer into my head as quick as I want them to. And I am less tolerant than I was (which probably wasn’t that tolerant to start with). But I think crisis is exaggerating the carrier bag of emotions that comes with ageing.

Mostly I just feel very lucky to be where I am, both in work and outside of work, surrounded by special people who make the days better.  

So perhaps I’ll have a mid-life thanksgiving instead. Turkey, anyone?

Jane

Election and Selection

I am sure I am not the only person who is a little jaded by both the election coverage on the television and the endless leaflets being dropped through the front door. Though I think every person should take an interest and ought to vote, when the messages from all the politicians are so negative, it’s hard to be enthused.

My political interest was prodded by the news that Sandi Toksvig was planning to set up a political party but I was dismayed when I heard that it wouldn’t be ready until the next election and further disappointed when I heard the name of the new party. It’s going to be called the Women’s Equality Party. Isn’t that an oxymoron? I love the idea of a party that fights for equality but how can you only fight for equality for half the world? An Equality Party – that fights for equal pay for all – would be fighting for the same end as one that fights for equal pay for women. And if you care about equality, why not fight for equality in areas where men get the raw deal (I’m thinking of Fathers for Justice here).

Equality is, of course, hard to enforce, when so many of the decisions that affect us are based on judgement. Have you ever been in a position where you’ve interviewed people for a role and found two candidates who are equally as good?  You choose the one you “like” best. Now that “like” could be based on their gender, favourite football team or their cuteness. But that’s human nature and I’ve yet to find an example of someone fighting human nature and winning.

Some people advocate positive discrimination but I am not one of them. I don’t believe it is right to use discrimination in any form as a means to expedite social change. I think it creates more discrimination in people’s hearts when they are forced down a single path, regardless of whether they see that as the right or wrong one. No-one likes to be told what to do so we’re back to the idea of fighting human nature again.

Forcing someone that they can only eat cabbage soup or boiled cabbage, when they don’t like cabbage, will not make them like cabbage. What we have to do is devise recipes to make them like cabbage enough to choose it from the menu. Stir-fried cabbage and bacon, anyone?

 Until next time.

Jane