Many years ago…pre little people….The Mr & I lived in a house with a HUGE garden..the garden had a vegetable plot and we used to spend hours upon hours digging, planting and weeding.
The Vegetable growing wasn’t always successful…but the pleasure was as much about getting our fingers dirty as it was the taste & utter satisfaction on days like Christmas day, knowing that every single vegetable on the table including the potatoes was home grown. Since then we have hankered to do it again but have never lived anywhere with the space….
This time around the motivation has been “organic”…. I explained my concerns in a previous blog post (“Dig”) about the amount of chemicals in the food that we eat. After various pleads for land that we could borrow amounted to nothing, we took shovel to lawn & dug up the front garden!
Drastic!
I did not allow for the fact that various operations & weekend commitments including that trip to Brussels delayed the digging considerably….
….Nor did I allow for The Mr’s macho need to construct something visually aesthetic as well as functional…..so the actual planting part was considerably later than it perhaps could/should have been….and as a result all of my grand ideas of companion planting for weed control and pest prevention sort of fell by the wayside.
It does however look great…and every day when I come home from work I see new growth….plants that seem to have shot up in a day…flowers popping up all over the potato plants…strawberries to pick…
From my Superfoods list we are growing 2 varieties of Sweet Potato, Tomatoes, Leeks, Onions, Kale, Broccoli, Cabbages, Spinach, Raspberries and Carrots.
Somewhere dotted in the mix are also Parsnips, Peas, Green Beans, Sweetcorn, Courgettes, Beetroot and Potatoes……lots of potatoes!
The climbing beans haven’t done so well as yet…and I know we planted the leeks wrong…but we are eating Lettuce, Radish and spring onions daily now, snacking on strawberries and grilling Courgettes on the BBQ.
The scale isn’t huge….we will need to buy extra to top up…..but it’s a step towards removing chemicals…even if the battle with slugs & snails…and neighbourhood cats has taken on epic vigilante proportions!
*lesson No1…slugs can be distracted by flowers
*lesson No2…slugs don’t eat as much if you water in the morning
*lesson No3….cats will rip through bug netting to curl up on baby plants just because they can
*lesson No4…neither the cats….nor the snails like the onions or garlic…..plant them in abundance!
The pleasure and satisfaction of gardening is like a daily therapy….even the watering and weeding is a chance to wind down after a long day at work…a time to laugh and talk with the family before the manic bath, bed, evening clubs routine begins. Switching off is something I struggle with these days….every Melanoma patient is advised to reduce the stress in their lives….I think of it as well as a vital part of preventing (further) frown lines!
Before I was diagnosed with Melanoma we had plans….dreams that included land…and specifically vegetables. Over the last year that dream felt lost & left behind…..as though everything in our world needed to change….completely and radically.
My adjustment to Melanoma isn’t unique…many people I have met and spoken to have found that coming to terms with Melanoma is more like coming to terms with a “new you”….that nothing seems the same as before. Life revolves around a series of hospital appointments, letters, results, waves of panic, paranoia, and occasionally just so that you can complete the “Jekyll & Hyde meets Bi-polar” picture, additional flurries of reckless “live for the minute no care in the world” mentality!
I am only 1 year in…..the Melanoma may be (hopefully) on hold….but I have the Colon related issues that still require surgery and that means my world…every plan for the summer still has a question mark following diary entries.
My life is still on hold.
But as the vegetables grow I am reminded of those things that have been written off as impossible because of Melanoma….and I am starting to think that I, we….shouldn ‘t have to sacrifice life & living for Melanoma.
The vegetables don’t need chemicals to make them grow…a storm that blows the young plants down doesn’t keep them down indefinitely ….they persevere.
Cancer isn’t comparable to growing vegetables…..but cancer takes over everything…it’s like an unwelcome stubborn weed….it comes back. And even when it isn’t visible…the knowledge of it, the potential, the dread, the anticipation, the anger…all of that becomes all consuming…an infatuation…like a ridiculous crush without the happy endorphins.
I need to make Melanoma fit into my world…. I think I need to re-prioritise…..perhaps even try to make those shelved plans become reality.
After all….life is for living….for growing….and learning.