Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

First we had the coffee, then we did the thing. An orderly beginning, especially as the thing was a list.  A list is one of my favourite structures. It should be (ours is, hurrah) simple, fluid, evolving. Ticking off items is dopamine rich. And if at the year’s end there are tasks leftover you can burn that nonsense and start again. Failure is only failure if you refuse to start again, again, again. (Yet some folks fear it so much they can't even begin.)  We aren't thinking ‘New Year New Me’ we are more taking stock of where we are, checking our route to where we'd like to be, taking note of seasonal chores. Lucky us, already on a journey. Doesn't mean we will never feel lost. But if we do, okay, maybe first we mewl and curse, but then we brew the coffee. 

On social media, if you have picked a flower, you can display it in a vase , take a picture, you can angle the stem to hide the slug bites, you can artfully light them. You curate, you edit. The flower is of course something from your life - happy or sad, it is proffered up to be examined, appreciated, related to, shared. But every flowerbed requires fallow time to thrive. Real life shrivels from the overshare, virtual life becomes a facade, a lie. I have been fallow awhile online, beautifully busy offline, with small complaints like a leaky roof , like sometimes the weather wasn't right. I always have bruises (either from training or tree related) but didn't get ill once. I was not hungry. Our plans for the land are taking tangible shape, I am working on three novels, I am making pretty things out of broken stuff, I am enjoying the work and the rests in between. Next year the idea is to record and share more of the Paddock Garden Orchards adventures- I will be curating, I ...

19th November, a Wednesday. On the very next hill it is cloud-dark and raining; our cheeks and fingers are bright, pinched by the wind, our eyes are squinting through sunlight. A layer of leaf mulch begins to gather over the track, and under the heap of cut branches taken from the overgrown boundary. The old hedge is being laid in: it will grow up to make a living fence. What is discarded is of use as firewood, or whittling projects, or the construction of semi-tidy deadhedges. Today we are building the sixth of these- we are not sure how many we will have by the end of the hedging season but in the top field the plan is to cover the upper swell of the hill. This will make mini microclimates, shelterbelts for shrubs that will grow and make more shelter, and for our (hopefully) showboating canopy trees. They will make shelter for wildlife, (wrens and robins jump through the branches before they are even finished) they will add options to games of hide-and-seek: they will be ...

My Chromebook has been crumbling. It seems a little like dementia, this inability to upgrade its powers of communication, it makes me sad, even for an object. It's one of the reasons my posts here have been put aside, that and generally being tumbled by tiredness. I have saved up money for a replacement, also I have spent that money on trees and shrubs. I have two novels to sort out however, and this will be the reason I save up again. I don't stop writing, even if I don't tell anyone. In the meantime should you need a calm place to go, I have begun a substack account. Please do drop by. If the kettle crumbles we can make tea (or soup) on the firepit. Me on substack:  Lisa Southard