Off colour
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Photo: Cloudy Sky
“Why don’t you spend the day in bed if you’re feeling off colour? The Min Pins would love it. I’ll bring you a hottie and breakfast in bed in half an hour.”
These past few days I’ve been feeling really odd. Light headed and detached. Not wanting to go to work and longing to stay under the capacious duvet.
“I was planning to get out into the garden.”
“But it’s pouring with rain!”
So I finished the fascinating book I’ve been reading this week. What The Animals Tell Me
When I read the last page and closed the book, sunshine suddenly burst through the window. So I dressed quickly as sped down to the garden.
I’ve been digging the bindweed from the fruit cage borders beside the chicken run. Just 45 minutes when I return early enough from work. Now that the clocks have changed to British Summer TimeI can spend an extra hour in the garden. I finished digging over the fruit cages, planted two rows of shallots in the kitchen garden and as I started to tackle the main herbaceous border, I was entertained by the sonorous carousel of the annual frog bacchanal. I finally came into the warm kitchen when it was too dark to see a weed. Feeling clear headed and far more positive.
Gardening is a truly therapeutic activity. Particularly when you are growing your own food and flowers. I read a book three years ago written by a man who was suffering from depression and started to tend an allotment with his friend. The book is good. You see the man’s life gradually opening like a flower. Yet this is a gritty belt and braces book, describing the challenge of taking on an allotment with little gardening experience. Allotted Time
If you would like to win my copy of this book, leave a comment on this post. You could be the owner of a hardback book that I found inspirational and that has really helped me tackle my blacker moments.
When you (or a smoker you know) decides to kick the habit it makes sense get the best aids to help you succeed. Nobacc gives you two big advantages. It is something to hold and handle instead of a cigarette and the menthol hit kills the pangs. Click here to stop smoking
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I started following your blog a couple of weeks ago and you’ve inspired me to make my own bacon and to finally tackle my bindweed problem. The book sounds great but you may not want to send it to NZ if I was lucky enough to win.
I know those days too well. Rainy days just seem to bring out the need to burrow away. But lucky that sunshine came and gave you a productive, pleasant end to your off color day!
May spring paint your days with sunny colours!
Who could resist posting a comment after an offer like that, it certainly sounds like an intriguing book. Glad you are getting out in the garden and benefitting from the spring sunshine. Our snow actually started to disappear yesterday in great quantities and we can see patches of rather miserable looking grass now here in Latvia
Isn’t that wonderful how spring comes to renovate nature and we are all part of it. Each time,year after year,to participate to this awakening is a new adventure!
I know how you feel about the warm duvet – I’ve got a allotment plot full of bramble roots to try and tame!
Even when the sun is full and the birds are twittering, sometimes it’s just ‘easier’ to do something else.
I will do some digging today. I will do some digging today.
I really will!
How wonderful that you have frogs to sing you into spring, I’ll bet it sounds marvellous.
I’ve been feeling exactly the same for over a week but I think I’m finally winning the battle.
I have not been sleeping too well and feel so tired when the alarm goes off that I just want to stay in bed! My thought wander to selling up and living on a house boat although thats probably linked to corronation streets current story line!
We have a velux window right next to the bed that does not have a blackout blind on it so it lets in a fair amount of light during the night, that coupled with the new lamp post that has been erected right outside the house has added to the problem. So for the last 2 nights I have been wearing an eye shade to help me sleep and hopefully bring me out of the gloom!
I’m looking out of the window this morning whilst I’m writing this and the day looks like it just may be a bright and cheerful one!
Prehaps Fiona, by tackling the bind weed in your garden you theraputically cleared it from your head.
Allotments are therapeutic indeed – except they don’t work as marriage guidance! Fortunately himself is as committed to ‘the plot’ as I am so we spent the whole weekend there, but I heard several allotment holders bemoaning that their other halves had wanted them to do something else that weekend …
I find that the clock change really messes up my sleep for a few days, so your post was a reminder that getting out and doing something is a better therapy that wallowing in misery.
Sorry to hear you’ve been feeling off-colour, Fiona … but everything gets easier to bear when the clocks change – all that light when you want it. And this post is a good reminder that gardening is one of those activities that improves every aspect of life …. I seem to have forgotten this over the past couple of rainy summers (no point in pretending to be anything other than a fairweather gardener!)
All the best
Joanna
With the change of the clocks we can all look forwards to getting out in the lighter evenings more and pulling ourselves out from under the winter blues. Beautiful day here in Devon today, I look out of the window and see trees blossoming, squirrels scampering and the daffs nodding their mellow heads in the breeze. My fingers are itching to get in the earth after work and plant something – quite possible white sprouting broccoli!
I own the Allotted Time book already and agree it’s an inspiring read. Try ‘Diggers Diary’ by Victor Osborne for a gentle ramble through his plot, complete with recipes and laughs. It inspired me to get my name on the waiting lists and I have now had my plot a year. Therapy it ceertainly is although I have to work to ensure the depredations of the slugs do not disturb my calm too much!
Glad the bright weather enticed you outside. Keep it up! Best
I’m glad you went for the duvet option to start with, that way you got the best of both worlds and the Min Pins had a treat too. Hope you have sunshine today!! x
On the opposite side of the World, with the opposite season yet it was similar for me today.
Snuggling up to a purring puss-cat (snuggling up to 3 Minpins and a hottie – you must have been feeling very low) this morning, not wanting to face the World.
Then the contrasting joy of taking the washing off the line and folding it while still outside in a temperature of 23C. Zebbycat soaking up the brilliant sunshine while the Tuis had territorial battles in the Ngaio tree – the tree’s berries are ripely purple. And no splats on the washing from the birds’ berry consumption
Brushing against the pots of herbs as I headed back inside, so wonderful scents were released and the dry clothes and towels smelt so fresh.
And as it became chilly I cooked. Quince jelly, focaccia bread and cheese crackers. the flat soon warmed from the oven’s warmth.
Like gardening, there is something very therapeutic about kneading dough. An excellent stress release and the gentle rhythum takes me miles away from noticing the symptoms of my various health hiccups. Next I read your post…
The “Frog chorus of Fiona” sounds restful compared to the rowdy bickering of the Tui birds. They are beautiful yet oh so loud. And there is healing from the black spots in both these glorious seasons, Autumn and Spring.
Thank you for inspiring me to stop and think about this, may your garden grow all the useful plants as the year warms up for you.
Enough rambling and raving from me, I’ll go hug the cat, Michelle
I know just what you mean. After recovering from pneumonia the past six weeks, yesterday was the first time I have been able to get outside. The sun was wonderful and burned into my back as I sat planting seeds. Nature certainly cures. I have ordered Alloted Time from the library, looks interesting.
Enjoy your gardening.
Margaret
I think there are a lot of us around who have that sort of a weekend. I ended the day by taking the dog onto the hills to run after sticks in the sun.
I love reading your blog and it was finding your blog that introduced me to the world of blogging which has helped me to blossom within my life.
I don’t have a very big garden at all and so have little gardening experience. I long for an allotment and have signed up for the Landshare scheme and am crossing my fingers…
This sounds like a book I would love to read and I expect I shall splurge out and buy it at some point…
Hope you are feeling better, with a little more energy, but there is nothing better when it’s raining than to snuggle under the covers with a good book.
Get better soon F’. I like the allotment as it is hard manual labour, for get everything but your foot, the spade and the earth. It connects you and revitalises you.
Hope you are feeling better today!
When in down mode all those gardening jobs seem enormous and impossible- but get outside and they just fly by.AND you feel so much better afterwards.
Not a good time of year- been down too, but the sunshine this morning got me going, duster out, washing on the line, gardening about to commence…Have a good day Fiona x
I’ve just found your lovely blog and am about to greedily read up your past entries. I used to live in England and am now in a flat in suburbia in Australia, missing the countryside and the chance to grow things. Perhaps you’ll inspire me to find a community garden.
I hope you feel better soon.
I have been following your blog for almost a year now. You always impress me with your attitude towards life. When you tell your stories about the Min Pins, your darling hens or the people you meet, it is so well written that I can see them clearly in front of me.
If you ever decide to change your line of work, why not write a book? I am sure you will get a big audience, also here in Norway.
All the best, Lone.
So sorry that you have been feeling below par. It’s amazing how the sunshine can totally change a mood and it came at just the right time when you had just finished reading your book. That bindweed job is one that I find really absorbing in tracing the roots through the soil. I bet the chickens were really concentrating on you! x
Mmmmmm snuggles…I really needed some snuggles today, instead I got an emergency trip to the dentist!!
I live in Greece and have a small roof garden only. Today I moved the geraniams up trying to make my view tolerable! Everyone thinks Greece so lovely, but not every view is to be cherished! It is amazing what one can do in pots or containers. Last year I planted a lemon tree in said pot and harvested 14 lovely, aromatic lemons. I can hardly wait to see what I get this year.
I have followed your blog for about a year—am facinated by all of it. Keep up the good work—and happy gardening.
sandi
Sorry to hear you are not feeling on top of the world Fiona and hope that it is nothing that a lie in and a good dig in the garden with the sun shining can’t cure. I’m planning to grow lettuce on my kitchen window sill as it looks as if it will be another few years before I get an allotment. I’m no higher up the list than this time last year. I keep hearing that allotments are being reallocated but the list is no shorter. How can that be?
Sorry to hear you have been feeling down. Curiously since I discovered your blog every time I google a recipe you are top of the results list. I could almost think you were plotting for world domination and I wouldn’t complain if you were.
I became a student (again) in January and my shared allotment patch won’t know what’s hit it next week when my two week easter holiday starts. It’s a good job my partner in crime has been giving it some attention otherwise it would be completely barren this year.
Hope you are feeling better Fiona!
I live in a flat so don’t have any land to grow anything but my dad does back home in Norfolk. Whenever I go up to visit my parents me and dad always walk around his lines of veg and I always see what I can plunder from him. He always had something on the go and thankfully hasn’t had too many disasters!
My mum calls his patch his mid life crises, dad calls it rest from her!!
Thirty-odd years ago I used to suffer bouts of truly deep depression related, I think, to childbirth (never proven), but when I started to get into the garden in any weather my mood used to change for the better so rapidly that I laughed in the face of the doctor and told him to put his drugs where the sun wouldn’t shine. Since that day I have never needed those drugs. Nowadays, my greatest pleasure (and the secret delight of my neighbours) is to get into the earth, wearing the oddest clothes I can find.
Be well my dear Fiona and smile all the while.
Not heard of the book, but I know the garden is my therapy, and brings me back safe from the jaws of the black dog, time and time again.
Monty Don suffers badly, too.
Who can stay depressed, when a seed shoots forth perfect, furled leaves ….
Fiona, I know what you mean. I awoke on Sunday with a headcold, but it cant keep me out of the garden, even with it raining since last night I keep popping out there to fiddle. Im clearing & harvesting the last of summers bounty & laying sugar cane mulch.
I wish I could make my partner Mathew read that book. He is not a reader, but is a depressive. He loves that I garden & that we now have chicken, but he thinks of it as strictly my thing, not his. I could wish he would help out but also that he could know how good it is for us physically 7 mentally.
I’m glad we’re now on Summertime! Hopefully it will bring some sunshine into everyone!
I can’t bear to watch the news at the moment.
I too start today on the borders, main task is to pull out all the old raggy stuff & plant my sweet peas, so they start climbing up the fence, that always puts me in a good mood :0)
p.s. hope this comment finds you well.
I hope you feel better soon, Fiona. Allotted Time is a wonderful book, isn’t it? Like many others i’ve been feeling really down the last week or so, and since my depression is cyclical in nature, the thing that works for me is to be aware of when i start to slip “down”, and then work like mad to defeat it. I headed out into the garden yesterday afternoon even though i didn’t really want to, and set about lifting the wooden sides to one of my beds, the first one i built (and the crappiest one!). The wood had rotted away in some cases, so i had to build replacements, but it looks so much better now. I sat on my Gardener’s Stool afterwards, having a cup of cinnamon tea, surveying my realm (doesn’t every gardener have a Gardener’s Stool or Bench or Chair or something?) and i felt a deep sense of satisfaction, not just that i’d gotten the bed done, or that i’d worked physically hard, but also that i didn’t let the blue feeling swallow me up and stop me from doing things.
I’m glad you felt better when you came in. I think gardening should be prescribed by doctors, its such a miracle worker. Its not just getting out into the fresh air. Its working with the soil, as well, i’m sure. Not just deeply satisfying and rewarding but fills some part of the soul, of the psyche.
keth
xx
Hi – long time lurker. I cant remember how I discovered you but you have provided me with inspiration in the kitchen and garden for a while now – so many thanks. I have started a blog and have added you as one of my favorites (because you are). Hope you are feeling better.