Garden report
The first step towards reconciliation is for us to spend some time together, and so that's what I'm doing. I'm sat on the ground in the garden, knees hunched, two cardigans. I feel as awkward as I would with an old relative I have long ignored.
The thing is, the garden frightens me at first. I can't get out to it over the winter, and so when I first start to approach it again in March, it is, at first, a stranger. I do not feel much love to start with. I am overwhelmed and repulsed by its brownness and its mess. I do not want to move any closer. Crooked dried limbs and skeletal fingers claw their stiffened way out of pots. The bare compost in the raised beds is uneven, sunken into dips and craters from cats' digging, full of unpleasant surprises. The anemone leaves are brown-tipped and torn, the honeysuckle like tangled wire. The roses have grown too tall and long-limbed, spiderous and gangly, and I know I must cut them but I don't want to touch them. I am frightened to hurt them, frightened of their desperate clambering away from death. One has burst its braces, its metal frame peeling open around its prickly panic and I wonder how on earth I will make it all ok again.
There are signs of decay all around me: piles of earth and leaf, flattened dandelions, and round, white coins of bird shit. My disasters are everywhere -- the succulent planter that didn't drain, where every fat chick and hen rotted away; sodden ferns gone the same way. The wallflower has been pickled by frost, its leaves limp, damp streamers. The bulbs I planted last autumn all seem to be in the wrong places. The short, plump, purple-lipsticked mouths of old crone crocus sit obstinate next to their gangly, pencil-thin daffodil companions, their tight lips less forthcoming in the cold air.
There is some encouragement and I look for it, morosely. The bleeding heart, ever faithful, has pushed its red hands up to the sky, the peonies too, and the dried-up clematis has split through its old wood with new, green hope. The miniature cherry holds its delicate pink bells on bare branches. The rosemary is dark and lush, despite it all, just opening its cold sky flowers. I try to let it lift me.
"Can I love you again?" I think it, honestly. I have to ask myself the question, scared that maybe I just won't care enough this year, not enough to try. I have to ask it because the truth is that I am already worn out with caring. My own body is taking all I have. I pushed my way out here clutching my walker, and I am tired, grey myself, just as ragged and broken as my companions. I know too that it will be a slow repair. This is not something that I can heal in one, dashing, impressive display. I know that this wound will be like caring for one that weeps and that it will require short, focused moments over a long, long time: a finding of touch and attention that causes neither of us too much pain. Dirty work, and slow. We are both needy, here and I wonder if any sort of balance is even possible: if it will be patient enough, if I will, if it's already too late.
Oh, it feels hopeless. Surely this relationship must be as soon dead as everything else? But, I look to the gifts and I wonder, for I am surrounded by gifts as I sit here. They are waiting in amongst all this ruin, already bought, already offered. Fat bags of compost, piled; a tray of new perennials; seed packets spread out on the path at my feet like Tarot cards. From my seat, I can see the new miniature greenhouse that I built from my safe place on the floor, lying back on the ground each time the screwdriver twist made me dizzy. Careful, skirting signs of ardour, but ardour nonetheless. And I haven't mentioned the fact that I fall asleep thinking about it, about this place, my heart aching, full. I haven't mentioned the fact that I could sooner stop loving it than I could my own bones.
The overgrown viburnum spreads like an umbrella over dirty, long-ignored bird feeders. And all I can think is, "I could, you know." I could paint the walls and fix the gate, buy a new bit of trellis HERE and replace THAT. Fresh stones on the patio, a sweeping here, a throw-out here, just a little at a time. And a smile comes, a shy one: "I could make you beautiful again, I think, if you like."
The light is dull and passive, but I don't think I am after all. And, god, how it seems to want to draw me closer. And, really, how could any loving, lonely heart resist?