PLANTS, PASSION AND PLONK

It's spring again, and just as the sap rises in the trees the urge comes over me to get out in the garden and start planting stuff. It has happened every year, ever since the first time I planted marigold seeds and watched them germinate and grow into flowers, all those years ago when I was a young mum. The magic has never faded.

Gone are the glory days when my vegetable plot was flourishing and the pots and tubs on my patio were bright with summer flowers.  However, the urge to plant and tend my garden still comes on strong, especially in spring.

I'm not giving up altogether; how could I? But things have been scaled back big time in the last few years due to arthritis and the needs of a young dog.

So this year, if I can keep the dog out of the raised beds, I shall restrict myself to growing spinach, runner beans, tomatoes and of course rhubarb, which kind of grows itself without much effort from me. Then I might decide to make my annual batch of rhubarb wine.

I've been doing that for several years now, with mixed results. So if I gave you a bottle of it at any time and it wasn't any good, I'm sorry! Some of it turned out great. It's a bit of a lottery to be honest, but great fun.

My Mum always used to say we were growing like rhubarb, which I thought was an odd thing to say. Now I know what she meant. This stuff is shooting up so fast!

The only other thing I’ve got around to in the garden so far, apart from a spot of weeding, is to start off some spinach seeds. They’re looking a bit sad at the moment but I’m sure they’ll buck up once they get outside.

Still, it’s not Easter yet. There’s time to get sorted before planting time really starts. Meanwhile, I can get on with my other passions - drawing, painting and photography. It’s taking most of my time figuring out how to work my new camera.

So many interests, so little time…

Anyway, I guess it's having a passion of some sort (or several, why not?) that keeps you young and engaging with life. 

I KNOW IT'S NOT QUITE DOING THE SMALLHOLDING THING, BUT SERIOUSLY....

  Look! Three Suffolk Bantams! Aren’t they cute!

I’m going to let you into a secret. I’ve always been seduced by the self-sufficiency movement. At least I think I have. I can see myself milking goats and tilling the soil, and spinning wool and making yogurt and bread and olive oil soap…

But, let’s face it, the reality can be grim when the compost toilet has been put up wind and there is no sun to fire up your solar panels. And I’m not sure I want to wake up at sunrise, in the cold, and have to light a fire and draw water to make tea.

So I sort of dip my toe in the water and pretend. I’ve accepted the fact that I’m not going to get a smallholding, like ever. But three small Suffolk Bantams? That I can manage. We had chickens last year, but they got out-foxed [or out-badgered] so the hen house was laying empty and desolate.

In the back of my mind I knew I would get some more hens, but since I have a mega-mega-stressful-busy week next week I was mentally putting it off till, say, the middle of April. However: today I walked past a shop in Porlock, and there was a card in the window advertising Suffolk Bantams. And a photo:

Aren’t they cute?  I said to my friend.

And I phoned the contact number. And would you believe it? They were just past the church up the lane by the recreation ground and I could go and see them then and there...

You will never guess what! Here we are in Somerset and the nice chicken lady mentions that she went to school in Kent. Oh, so did I, I say.

She only went to MY PRIMARY SCHOOL! [Shout out to Loose County Primary]. And her sister went to MY SECONDARY SCHOOL [shout out to Maidstone Girls’ Grammar] right at the other side of the country.

The lovely chicken lady gave me a box - I had come unprepared after all. Who knew I would be bringing chickens home after a work meeting in Porlock? She drilled holes in the box, threw in hay, laid them in gently and tied the box up. She gave me a bag of their feed 'to keep them going' and gave instructions to 'drive carefully' and we were off!

My son straightened out the hen house very hastily where it had been rocked off its base by the last storm, cleaned out the old hay and cleaned and filled their feed and water bottles. 

Anyway. My three Suffolk Bantams have safely gone to roost for the night. And just to prove I do a bit of tilling and sowing and smallholdy stuff, here’s a pic ↓

BTW, if you want a really funny informative video series on smallholding/ homesteading, you have to read/watch these… She’s growing on me….

https://beckyshomestead.com/

https://www.youtube.com/user/scottpictures

GUESS WHAT I DID WHEN I WAS 43....?

To set the scene you must realise that I have had a lot of kids and had been a stay-at-home Mum for ever; I was perfectly happy with my home and kids [I had an Aga for goodness sakes…]. I dabbled in writing for magazines, I did an Open University course, I tidied up a bit and did baking etc. etc.

So, the point is: I had no career, no ‘job’, no training.

Then, after I had recovered from an emergency hysterectomy when I lost my last child in utero [thanks to placenta accreta – google it], I looked out of the kitchen window, my hands in the washing up bowl and thought, ‘What do I do now?’

Some people may think that I had plenty to do, but shucks, I was on a roll – my youngest was nearly ready to go to playgroup and with no little baby on the way what would I spend my days doing? I need to train at something I thought, so that when they are all at school I can get a job.

And then, all those hours reading medical textbooks merged with a magazine article I had been reading about a woman who was chronically ill for many years, and had ended up on steroids because the doctors couldn’t do anything for her. So she went to a medical herbalist and within six months she had been weaned off the steroids and was perfectly fine. So impressed was she with the treatment that she contacted The National Institute of Medical Herbalists and trained as a medical herbalist herself.

This provoked two three four questions in me.                                                            

1.       Herbs could form a system of medicine that could treat ill people? [As opposed to just chamomile tea to help you sleep and other ‘old wives tales’]

2.       There were places where you could train to do this?

3.       Where?

4.       How?

To cut a long story short, I found out and applied. I also found out that to take the degree I would first have to take a Foundation Degree in Chemistry and Biology. But to take the Foundation Degree I would first have to take a GCSE in Chemistry.

So, there I am at 43 going to the same college as one of my sons, to take my Chemistry. We collected ours results together which was fun. I took my Foundation Degree, then my BSc [Hons] in Herbal Medicine.

My Uni in London

BTW, that's a bruise on my chin in the first pic, not 3-day stubble. I tripped and fell trying to catch the bus in London,     and the photo is of me back in my digs that evening, studying like a good girl...

I am grateful that I live in a country where middle-aged women can go to University and take degrees [pity about the cost tho’, but thank you darling…]. And thankful that I can also go back to college again to take a diploma in teaching [thank you darling, again…].

My youngest child is now 17 and if I hadn’t grasped the opportunity to go to University in my 40s I think I might be twiddling my thumbs or doing crosswords. Instead I am seeing patients [www.growingmedicine.co.uk], writing study guides for our Herbal Medicine School [www.schoolofherbalmedicine.co.uk], teaching at the school, leading herb walks, running workshops, collecting wild herbs, growing medicinal herbs, making medicines, giving talks.

You might be surprised what you could do if you had the courage! If there is something you ‘really want to do, but secretly fear you’ll never do it, then…’ read this [I just found a copy]:

Stop Talking Start Doing by Shaa Wasmund. It’ll get you going….

Me with a student picking Galium aperine