Thanks, Lee! Stir crazy isn't the kind of crazy I like to land in - it's great to get out and about to ward it off! LOL - 'ankle biters'! Have just been looking at your Stack - great work!
Loved this! The Garden as a Metaphor is something I have returned to time and time again for grounding, understanding, and a place to let my tears drop and plot into the soil. I am so glad for you that your research into the little seed packets and their needs brought you to yours. Walk ON!
Mary, you're so kind - thank you for this. To be honest I'd feared I'd stretched the metaphor rather too metaPHAR, so I'm very grateful for your compliment! 🌱
Oh Rebecca I loved this!! Your words were brilliant and captured that feeling of being trapped and needing to move and the winter doldrums making it so hard to break out! Thanks for bringing that feeling to life. I am just like you in that walking = life and brain power. I can hardly form my emotions without walking to help midwife the process. I'll come back to this one many times ❤️
Thank you so much, Sabrina! I'm so glad you enjoyed this post. It's amazing how powerful walking can be, isn't it? I'm grateful that I CAN get out there and tramp up those miles, given that I clearly need it as a tool for preventing withered words.
'...to help midwife the process' is such a great phrase! 🙌
Feb 4, 2023·edited Feb 4, 2023Liked by Rebecca Holden
Oh, now I am, Rebecca, as you know, a grower. And as the days lengthen, I find myself in the still dark late afternoons and evenings, amid sprawling graph paper, satisfying black pencils with white eraser tips, and my collection of wartime (minor obsession) gardening books.
Funnily enough, only last night, I was pondering on the sale, in the 1940s, of pea and bean seed, *by the pint* ! I know! You took along your own jug! How glorious!
Apparently, modern seed is more regulated, quality controlled, and germinates a great deal more reliably, so our mere envelopes are plenty for a family.
But just see, bean seeds, like thoughts, can not only breathe, they can *pour* , and *flow*!
Should we ever meet, I'll stand you a pint of Scarlet Emperor!
Pints of bean seeds - oh, Jackie, that's WONDERFUL! Pints of prawns I've heard of, pints of ice cream in the States, but beans? Love it!
I love the sound of your early-year planning process for your smallholding. I haven't done any planning as such for our single raised bed (and no livestock), but THIS year I'm going to put a lot more effort in to producing what I hope will be a nice succession of veg.
I'm holding up a metaphorical glass right now to your pint of beans! Cheers! 🍻
Great food for thought here. I agree with you that there is a link between creativity and exercise and being out in nature is so good for clearing away the cobwebs and coming up with ideas. I'm lucky enough to be near a range of hills near Edinburgh and am hoping that my walks in the hills will help me to, at last, get going on my too many projects for this year!
Thanks, Ewan! I'm wondering when I'd first noticed a link between creativity and exercise - to my horror I think I first became actively AWARE of it when I turned forty, and started exercising because I wanted to, not because I felt I had to. It's all in the framing!
Where you are sounds beautiful. I love Scotland, and am looking forward to my next trip north of the border.
Feb 4, 2023·edited Feb 4, 2023Liked by Rebecca Holden
Ah, Scotland. I would dearly love to be striding along the hills of Lochaber again or the cliffs of the East Neuk. Heaven! Who knows what I could write along those paths... Thanks for the memories.
Excellent metaphor. I would think there are many of us who feel this way about the onrushing spring after the series of dark winters we have endured. To spring 2023!
Yes! You really can feel the first signs of spring if you look hard enough. Just the glimpse of a little warmth in the sun this morning is enough to bring the feeling of hope and regeneration that spring always brings.
I do wonder whether February might be my favourite month. If it’s not February then it’s May with all the green that it brings. No scorched grass by that time and everything growing fast. By February is like a box of goodies that is just starting to squeak open. The promise of new life to come. A feeling that we are nearly there.
Martin, these are such beautiful words in response to mine - thank you!
I love that you see February as the 'box of goodies that is just starting to squeak open'. Spring is definitely on the way: not only do we have a pair of blue tits popping in and out of the nestbox in the fig tree, but I found a pigeon's egg - broken, messy - outside the back door on February 1st! Our pair of amorous pigeons have been displaying an embarrassing variety of 'get a room' behaviour for weeks, but such an early egg was a surprise!
May is my favourite month, as it features lilies of the valley and longer evenings that actually feel warm. The promise of summer...
Your expression "loved up pigeons" is just delightful. They do seem to go a little mad, don't they? Cooing, head-bobbing, dancing in circles -- long before the other wee birds wake up to spring. The only loved up feelings I have any more arise from some of the characters I create in my notebook. I often dance in circles myself, if the truth be told. Sharron at 🍁Leaves
They've been getting what my elderly relations would have called 'quite unnecessary', Sharron! 🤣 I enjoyed watching them yesterday, actually - no, not in the throes of that stuff - they were very sweetly offering each other bits and pieces from the silver birch tree which were far too big for any kind of nesting activities. Still, the two of them did a good job of impressing each other regardless of the twiggy impracticalities of their chosen material!
Yay to dancing in circles, and to creating the perfect partner on paper!
You’ve sparked some thought here, Rebecca. I’ve been walking all winter (treadmill in my office), but I haven’t been outside much, which is murderous for my creativity! I hadn’t realized it until just now.
This week I saw through the window some paperwhites that had bloomed, and the Japanese Magnolias are also in full bloom. And the little snowbells that pop up beneath the fig tree are making an appearance. It seems so early, doesn’t it? Yet, today we will make it to 62 degrees with lots of sunshine.
We’ve had a very rainy January, so I’m looking forward to getting out today for an adventure. Ours will be a drive through some backroads to find new places to explore on foot. I think I’m bringing along my pocket notebook (and leave the digital on in the car) in your honor.
It's amazing, Holly, how it's being outside that makes the difference - I've been bounding around my living room in front of YouTube exercise videos on most of the days that I haven't been out walking, or out walking long enough - and actually, although that's good for me in other ways, it certainly doesn't get me moving my thoughts around in the way that exercising outside does!
I've just looked up snowbells - they look like leucojums, which I call 'giant snowdrops', and which I think come out rather later around here. We've got plenty of snowdrops, though. 62 degrees? Let me look that up in Celsius - 16 degrees - so, a bit warmer than it was here yesterday, then, which was a pretty warm-for-now 14 degrees, or 57 degrees F.
Yay to exploring on foot with a pocket notebook! You and I make a good team! 🙌
I think I call them snowbells because they popped up in the yard when I was a child, and they reminded me of Tinkerbell’s skirt!🤣 Whatever they are, I think they are the sweetest flower and a welcome find!
The other gardening-related concept that I’ve applied in the past when I’d be frustrated with the lack of ideas emerging from the previously plush gardens of my mind was letting things lie fallow. Farmers do it, rotate crops to another plot, to allow regeneration of nutrients in a field.
Maybe this period was your fallow time, and now a new crop is ready emerge. I’m excited for the bounty 😊
You're so kind, Bryn - thank you. I love your thoughts around letting things lie fallow - that's an excellent metaphor! I hadn't thought of things that way. 🤔🌱😊
It’s a cool -42°C with the windchill this morning here, since an arctic air mass decided to come calling - not unheard of for my part of the world. But a little colder than normal. And since it’s been chilly this week, I’ve been missing my morning and afternoon walks around my hospital. My brain feels trapped too.
You reminded me of a childhood memory about bean seeds: my parents are not gardeners, but we had neighbours who definitely were and took it upon themselves to try to encourage us. They would bring bounty from their garden (very welcome) and seeds (tossed in the junk drawer). We had a bunch of loose seeds in the drawer, just sitting in a cup. They were very pretty, black with a little lavender splash. My mom had me go plant them in our front box one day. They turned out to be climbing beans.
The neighbour was delighted. We were not. My parents were horrified, they had to go buy trellises and these beans seemed to defy our neglect.
Goodness me: sorry to state the obvious, but gosh, that's FREEZING, Alison! 🥶 I'm sorry that it means you haven't been out and about, but wow, I'd definitely think twice - no, fifty times - about braving the wilds in temperatures that are even a fraction of that!
I love that your neighbours tried to get you gardening - and how wonderful that those junk-drawer bean seeds were given life in the front box! '...Seemed to defy our neglect' indeed - they were clearly desperate to show that they hadn't belonged in the junk drawer! Go, beans! 🌱
We went away on vacation and the neighbours took care of the beans (in addition to getting our mail) and they looked even better for proper care when we got back…and after that there was nothing we could to to them that hindered their growth.
As both a killer of plants (seriously, I would LOVE to be the person who browns my food, but I'm a failure) and a runner who took up the activity in my mid 30s, I connect with this so much.
Thanks, Sarah! I'm so embarrassed about my track record with plants. In fact I've been working on a post for later this month all about a special one I used to have in my life. (Plot spoiler: USED to.) 🌱
I'm finally walking again after navigating some chronic back pain that made it impossible. Even the little loop near our house feels an adventure, but I hope to work up to more wild spaces. The connection between brain and body and nature is a fertile one. It's almost magic the way the ideas surface.
Gosh, Sarah, I'm so pleased to hear that you've been able to get back out there, albeit gently. I love what you've said here about the connection between brain and body and nature. However deeply or not we're able to get out there, it always really counts towards our wellbeing. And yay to those ideas magically surfacing! ✨
I feel your pain, Sarah. Truly. I once walked 85 miles across the waistband of Scotland and then climbed Ben Nevis. Now, reduced to a daily mile of hobbling through the local arroyo. Darn it! Still any bit of movement is better than sitting in the arm chair, right? And the ideas do seem to flow even on those short outings. I wish you well! Sharron at 🍁Leaves
Nice Job. I look forward to the change from winter to spring too. There is nothing I can add to the comments that have already been posted, so I will stop here.
Wow, sounds amazing, Luisa!
Thanks, Lee! Stir crazy isn't the kind of crazy I like to land in - it's great to get out and about to ward it off! LOL - 'ankle biters'! Have just been looking at your Stack - great work!
Loved this! The Garden as a Metaphor is something I have returned to time and time again for grounding, understanding, and a place to let my tears drop and plot into the soil. I am so glad for you that your research into the little seed packets and their needs brought you to yours. Walk ON!
Mary, you're so kind - thank you for this. To be honest I'd feared I'd stretched the metaphor rather too metaPHAR, so I'm very grateful for your compliment! 🌱
Oh Rebecca I loved this!! Your words were brilliant and captured that feeling of being trapped and needing to move and the winter doldrums making it so hard to break out! Thanks for bringing that feeling to life. I am just like you in that walking = life and brain power. I can hardly form my emotions without walking to help midwife the process. I'll come back to this one many times ❤️
Thank you so much, Sabrina! I'm so glad you enjoyed this post. It's amazing how powerful walking can be, isn't it? I'm grateful that I CAN get out there and tramp up those miles, given that I clearly need it as a tool for preventing withered words.
'...to help midwife the process' is such a great phrase! 🙌
Oh, now I am, Rebecca, as you know, a grower. And as the days lengthen, I find myself in the still dark late afternoons and evenings, amid sprawling graph paper, satisfying black pencils with white eraser tips, and my collection of wartime (minor obsession) gardening books.
Funnily enough, only last night, I was pondering on the sale, in the 1940s, of pea and bean seed, *by the pint* ! I know! You took along your own jug! How glorious!
Apparently, modern seed is more regulated, quality controlled, and germinates a great deal more reliably, so our mere envelopes are plenty for a family.
But just see, bean seeds, like thoughts, can not only breathe, they can *pour* , and *flow*!
Should we ever meet, I'll stand you a pint of Scarlet Emperor!
Pints of bean seeds - oh, Jackie, that's WONDERFUL! Pints of prawns I've heard of, pints of ice cream in the States, but beans? Love it!
I love the sound of your early-year planning process for your smallholding. I haven't done any planning as such for our single raised bed (and no livestock), but THIS year I'm going to put a lot more effort in to producing what I hope will be a nice succession of veg.
I'm holding up a metaphorical glass right now to your pint of beans! Cheers! 🍻
Great food for thought here. I agree with you that there is a link between creativity and exercise and being out in nature is so good for clearing away the cobwebs and coming up with ideas. I'm lucky enough to be near a range of hills near Edinburgh and am hoping that my walks in the hills will help me to, at last, get going on my too many projects for this year!
Thanks, Ewan! I'm wondering when I'd first noticed a link between creativity and exercise - to my horror I think I first became actively AWARE of it when I turned forty, and started exercising because I wanted to, not because I felt I had to. It's all in the framing!
Where you are sounds beautiful. I love Scotland, and am looking forward to my next trip north of the border.
This link is a valuable one for us all. It is reliable always.
Ah, Scotland. I would dearly love to be striding along the hills of Lochaber again or the cliffs of the East Neuk. Heaven! Who knows what I could write along those paths... Thanks for the memories.
Excellent metaphor. I would think there are many of us who feel this way about the onrushing spring after the series of dark winters we have endured. To spring 2023!
Thank you so much! And yes: look out spring, here we come! 🌱
Yes! You really can feel the first signs of spring if you look hard enough. Just the glimpse of a little warmth in the sun this morning is enough to bring the feeling of hope and regeneration that spring always brings.
I do wonder whether February might be my favourite month. If it’s not February then it’s May with all the green that it brings. No scorched grass by that time and everything growing fast. By February is like a box of goodies that is just starting to squeak open. The promise of new life to come. A feeling that we are nearly there.
Martin, these are such beautiful words in response to mine - thank you!
I love that you see February as the 'box of goodies that is just starting to squeak open'. Spring is definitely on the way: not only do we have a pair of blue tits popping in and out of the nestbox in the fig tree, but I found a pigeon's egg - broken, messy - outside the back door on February 1st! Our pair of amorous pigeons have been displaying an embarrassing variety of 'get a room' behaviour for weeks, but such an early egg was a surprise!
May is my favourite month, as it features lilies of the valley and longer evenings that actually feel warm. The promise of summer...
Your expression "loved up pigeons" is just delightful. They do seem to go a little mad, don't they? Cooing, head-bobbing, dancing in circles -- long before the other wee birds wake up to spring. The only loved up feelings I have any more arise from some of the characters I create in my notebook. I often dance in circles myself, if the truth be told. Sharron at 🍁Leaves
They've been getting what my elderly relations would have called 'quite unnecessary', Sharron! 🤣 I enjoyed watching them yesterday, actually - no, not in the throes of that stuff - they were very sweetly offering each other bits and pieces from the silver birch tree which were far too big for any kind of nesting activities. Still, the two of them did a good job of impressing each other regardless of the twiggy impracticalities of their chosen material!
Yay to dancing in circles, and to creating the perfect partner on paper!
You’ve sparked some thought here, Rebecca. I’ve been walking all winter (treadmill in my office), but I haven’t been outside much, which is murderous for my creativity! I hadn’t realized it until just now.
This week I saw through the window some paperwhites that had bloomed, and the Japanese Magnolias are also in full bloom. And the little snowbells that pop up beneath the fig tree are making an appearance. It seems so early, doesn’t it? Yet, today we will make it to 62 degrees with lots of sunshine.
We’ve had a very rainy January, so I’m looking forward to getting out today for an adventure. Ours will be a drive through some backroads to find new places to explore on foot. I think I’m bringing along my pocket notebook (and leave the digital on in the car) in your honor.
But first...coffee!
It's amazing, Holly, how it's being outside that makes the difference - I've been bounding around my living room in front of YouTube exercise videos on most of the days that I haven't been out walking, or out walking long enough - and actually, although that's good for me in other ways, it certainly doesn't get me moving my thoughts around in the way that exercising outside does!
I've just looked up snowbells - they look like leucojums, which I call 'giant snowdrops', and which I think come out rather later around here. We've got plenty of snowdrops, though. 62 degrees? Let me look that up in Celsius - 16 degrees - so, a bit warmer than it was here yesterday, then, which was a pretty warm-for-now 14 degrees, or 57 degrees F.
Yay to exploring on foot with a pocket notebook! You and I make a good team! 🙌
I think I call them snowbells because they popped up in the yard when I was a child, and they reminded me of Tinkerbell’s skirt!🤣 Whatever they are, I think they are the sweetest flower and a welcome find!
It's a great name - I'll always think of them now as 'snowbells', so yay to Tinkerbell's skirt! 🧚♀️
Gosh I loved this. Like I always do your words.
The other gardening-related concept that I’ve applied in the past when I’d be frustrated with the lack of ideas emerging from the previously plush gardens of my mind was letting things lie fallow. Farmers do it, rotate crops to another plot, to allow regeneration of nutrients in a field.
Maybe this period was your fallow time, and now a new crop is ready emerge. I’m excited for the bounty 😊
You're so kind, Bryn - thank you. I love your thoughts around letting things lie fallow - that's an excellent metaphor! I hadn't thought of things that way. 🤔🌱😊
Winter claustrophobia opening space for sprouts of spring...I actually found myself taking a deep breath or two while I read this!
Thanks, Amie! I love what you've written here! 😊
It’s a cool -42°C with the windchill this morning here, since an arctic air mass decided to come calling - not unheard of for my part of the world. But a little colder than normal. And since it’s been chilly this week, I’ve been missing my morning and afternoon walks around my hospital. My brain feels trapped too.
You reminded me of a childhood memory about bean seeds: my parents are not gardeners, but we had neighbours who definitely were and took it upon themselves to try to encourage us. They would bring bounty from their garden (very welcome) and seeds (tossed in the junk drawer). We had a bunch of loose seeds in the drawer, just sitting in a cup. They were very pretty, black with a little lavender splash. My mom had me go plant them in our front box one day. They turned out to be climbing beans.
The neighbour was delighted. We were not. My parents were horrified, they had to go buy trellises and these beans seemed to defy our neglect.
Goodness me: sorry to state the obvious, but gosh, that's FREEZING, Alison! 🥶 I'm sorry that it means you haven't been out and about, but wow, I'd definitely think twice - no, fifty times - about braving the wilds in temperatures that are even a fraction of that!
I love that your neighbours tried to get you gardening - and how wonderful that those junk-drawer bean seeds were given life in the front box! '...Seemed to defy our neglect' indeed - they were clearly desperate to show that they hadn't belonged in the junk drawer! Go, beans! 🌱
We went away on vacation and the neighbours took care of the beans (in addition to getting our mail) and they looked even better for proper care when we got back…and after that there was nothing we could to to them that hindered their growth.
Did you enjoy eating them, though?
Honestly I don’t think they ended up being very good for eating!
🤣
As both a killer of plants (seriously, I would LOVE to be the person who browns my food, but I'm a failure) and a runner who took up the activity in my mid 30s, I connect with this so much.
Thanks, Sarah! I'm so embarrassed about my track record with plants. In fact I've been working on a post for later this month all about a special one I used to have in my life. (Plot spoiler: USED to.) 🌱
😂
THIS - this bit is one of the best things I’ve ever read... “My ideas need space and movement.
My thoughts wither without air and energy.
And without my walks, I’m lost for words.”
♥️ thanks so so much!! ✨💫
That's so lovely, Claire - thank you! 😊
I'm finally walking again after navigating some chronic back pain that made it impossible. Even the little loop near our house feels an adventure, but I hope to work up to more wild spaces. The connection between brain and body and nature is a fertile one. It's almost magic the way the ideas surface.
Gosh, Sarah, I'm so pleased to hear that you've been able to get back out there, albeit gently. I love what you've said here about the connection between brain and body and nature. However deeply or not we're able to get out there, it always really counts towards our wellbeing. And yay to those ideas magically surfacing! ✨
I feel your pain, Sarah. Truly. I once walked 85 miles across the waistband of Scotland and then climbed Ben Nevis. Now, reduced to a daily mile of hobbling through the local arroyo. Darn it! Still any bit of movement is better than sitting in the arm chair, right? And the ideas do seem to flow even on those short outings. I wish you well! Sharron at 🍁Leaves
Nice Job. I look forward to the change from winter to spring too. There is nothing I can add to the comments that have already been posted, so I will stop here.
Thanks so much, Scott! Yay to spring being on its way - winter always feels disproportionately and unfairly long, doesn't it?