Maidens Tears and Cats Ears

Earth and Beauty As Medicine

Dear Hearts

The realities of life are not always as we would wish them to be, so, what then?

Lying on the grass I can feel the ripples in the soil underneath me through the thin blanket. I feel the weight of Bella’s back leaning against me as she sleeps curled into a ball. She knows these episodes well and does not leave my side. I can hear a bee buzzing. I can hear by the sound they are nearby. They zig zigzag across the grass, sometimes close to the green and sometimes up and down a few inches.

I have been forced to stop. I have no choice in the matter. Do too much and the result is standstill.

The garden is my safe space when nothing else works. When I am not able to get any further. It’s a journey in itself to get there. Lying down on the ground is sanity and medicine. You might know this as ‘earthing’.

A pigeon coo-hoos. Sparrows chitter in the hedge and a blackbird sings, I am not moving. Trees move their arms in the slight breeze, their leaves a lullaby. The sun is warm this close to the ground. Sun rays have travelled millions of miles to reach their culmination here in the grass blades, short, cropped and tickly on my ankle where my foot has stretched out across the blanket edge.

This close to the ground I feel where the sun meets the earth and the grass grows out of warm soil. An ant hurries through this green jungle amongst Clover, Selfheal and the odd Daisy. After the Dandelions come Cats Ears on their slender stems. I don’t understand the obsession with sterile lawns. But then it’s a symbol of man-un-kinds’ need to dominate and control everything. It’s not just billionaires who have an unhealthy tendency to megalomania. The average gardener, king of all they survey, rules like a martinet. “Off with his head” to quote Alice in Wonderland.

Cats Ears and Maidens Tears. wonderfully poetic don’t you think? Here too is Mustard with a backdrop of Buddleia and Copper Beech.

Flowers in the wrong place (you might call them weeds) are despatched with clinical efficiency. The bees have to work hard to make their daily quotas. There is no place in a garden like that to lie down and watch ants.

Meanwhile, here, still, even though the grass is cropped, grow flowers in the lawn. There is much maligned moss too. Soft, understated and unsung. Birds line nests with it for their babies. We would have done this too, once upon a time.

Once upon a time … who says fairy tales are not real? …. Likely the same people who think that hidden disabilities don’t exist.

Here is the thing … just because we don’t see it does not mean it is not real.

The wind and flowers engage in a gentle dance together. It’s a bit like daydreaming, the dreamer sees the lover where no one else does. Cats’ Ears and Maidens Tears (Bladder Campion) move effortlessly while I watch. There is no-thing else to do.

I am not sure of me putting a picture of myself prone in the garden. It feels quite vulnerable to share, but this is the reality

Me with ever patient Bella. Definitely NOT the most flattering photograph!

Disabilities are rarely straight forward. They are not neat and tick box shaped. They are messy and sprawling with one leg off the edge of the blanket. Sometimes I can walk but with pain. Sometimes I am immobile because tiredness has dropped a very heavy weighted blanket on me. Sometimes both at once. It can be very hard to think, let alone do.

When the Fibromyalgia is in my arms and hands it is difficult to type. The Autism and ADHD is kind of like this too. Seemingly functioning one minute but do too much and my brain just says no more and there is no out thinking it. After a prolonged period of autistic burnout I don’t have the same bounce back ability as I once did. It’s weird and other folks have done a way better job of explaining it than I could. So, I have to be careful and pace myself. Of course, me being human and the realities of life also, mean this does not always happen. Even then flare ups are inevitable from time to time.

I pour all of myself into a love affair with beauty in an attempt to deal with the pain. I have a choice and I make it a conscious one.

Anyway, that is why there have been gaps in my writing these last few months. (My heartfelt thanks to you, dear reader for sticking with me). An attempt to work part time regularly each week, on zero hours contracts, while applying for permanent jobs is very draining. Set routine and security is good for autistic people (well, lest face it, for anyone). Except, and here is the kicker … those disability friendly organisations will not do job shares to accommodate disabilities. Therein lies the irony. My results speak for themselves, but it is not the results that matter. It is the ability to fit into that system that counts.

I can teach, and I can teach well, the work speaks for itself (as do the students) … but I don’t fit in the box.

I am not a victim. I’m like the weeds, I am merely attempting to put roots down in the wrong place. Some flowers survive in the most extraordinary inhospitable surroundings. They grow up through the paving slabs and even manage to flower. Not all plants can do that.

This is the realisation I have finally come to.

Perhaps it is boring for the able bodied to read about disabilities, annoying even. My social anxiety (which ebbs and flows) does not do well in walled up places and places. That too, stops me from writing. Better for me to be out among the clover, mustard and more. Those few flowers in the grass might not ‘do’ much, but they are nectar for bees. Those bees are what make the apples grow.

As bee keepers will tell you, important news should always be shared with the Honey-Makers. This is because they are keepers of wisdom. They will tell you to get your priorities straight and they should know, for it is they who visit the old Hawthorns like the ones I told you about last time. Those old crones cackling at me and no wonder.

The best gardeners are the ones who have a feel for the land they live on. They know what plants will grow where and they garden to suit the terrain. Put a plant in the wrong place and it will die. The best gardeners will bring out the best in a landscape for they have a feel for the land and the green and growing. The other kind of gardener has a regimen, not for the birds and bees, but for garden sprinklers and weed killer and regimented rows of limited plants. The rest are uprooted or never make it within the walls in the first place. Such gardens are silent. Birds don’t sing and bees don’t buzz.

Life is sound with small spaces of silence in between, like velvet to off-set diamonds.

I am glad to lie down where flowers grow in the grass.

Love

Amanda Claire x

A retreat in the woods, where the bees buzz and the birds sing. Out among the trees we could sit. Would you like to come? Gentle, deep and nourishing is the kind of vibe ... listening to the living land.