The hopeful gardener

As it happens, we are all feeling a bit sad at the moment.

My father-in-law Sam, has had to have brain surgery for the second time in 3 weeks.  And he is battling to stay with us, mentally, if not physically.

And we are here , waiting.

Waiting for news.

Waiting for the phone to ring.

Waiting for a text

Waiting for anything that  will tell us that Sam is getting better.

It's hangs over us like a cloud, this waiting.  Stopping any of us from doing anything, just in case.

Perhaps that is why the washing is piling up and the dishwasher isn't being emptied and the house looks like a bomb of clothes and bags and empty cups and newspapers has exploded all over it.

Or perhaps that is just an excuse.

Because the truth is, that whenever I'm feeling sad, I leave the inside of the house to gather dust, walk outside and start gardening..

When I was young, I could never understand why my parents would spend Sunday afternoons digging and weeding and planting and mowing . Why would anyone  choose to get their hands dirty and their feet muddy, when they could be talking with friends or shopping or watching TV.

I'd like to say it's an age thing. But that's not true.  

At the Nursery where I work, the 3 and 4 year olds love gardening. They spend hours digging in the dirt, pulling out the flowers and vegetables we planted so carefully with them the day before and lovingly watering the weeds.  Even the most wild of boys become intent and focussed when they are gardening, lost in that  sense of wonder that a tiny seed or hard round bulb can turn into a beautiful flower or an enormous strawberry.

So on Sunday afternoon, as Sam was rushed to the High Dependency Unit, clinging to life, I dug my hands deep into the warm soil.  I planted delicate purple flowers and tall, paper-thin  pink ones.  I filled baskets with earth and waged war on weeds.

And I felt my heart slow and my thoughts calm.

And for a few absorbing hours, I forgot.

Forgot that I was in a tiny garden, in a small city. 

Forgot that my day was clouded in a shroud  of waiting.

Forgot that sadness was only a breath away.

Because that's the thing about gardening and watching things grow.

It's timelessly and unendingly constant 

It's everywhere and all the time .

I have stood on hard, hot pavements in the middle of enormous, dirty cities and seen the startlingly bright petals of  a perfect flower poking through a dusty crack in the road.

I have sat on the top of barren, windswept mountains and seen a delicate white flower nestling behind a rock. I have driven through fields and fields of untended wild flowers carpeting the world with colour.

Nature is frightening and uncontrollable.

But those tiny flowers, those splashes of colour where you least expect to see them, give you hope.

Because if they can beat the odds, perhaps anyone can.

If the flowers in our garden can survive my inexpert, ungreen fingers - then maybe, just maybe, when the phone rings, it will be with good news.