In the garden

Max's plants are thriving. I may not have been able to keep him alive, but I'm doing a damn good job of keeping the plants that I'm growing in his memory alive. It's no consolation. I don't need to even say that. But looking at the plants, and tending to them, really does make me feel better. It's the wonder I feel at all the living things. I look at living things as if they are a rare novelty these days since my usual thoughts are so often death-side.

Yesterday was not a good day for me. I couldn't manage much, but I did what I could. And what I could do, I decided, was some gardening. It was crazily foggy in Melbourne yesterday morning. This winter has been so strange with fog and frost like I've never seen before in this city. I tell you this just to illustrate the fact that it wasn't a very friendly morning for gardening. Does that give me extra points for getting outside in it anyway? I think yes!

Those of you who know me in real life know how much I love tea. Tea, tea, tea. Can't get enough of it or its paraphernalia. For those who don't know me in real life, here's a tip: I really, really love tea! My favourite brew is an English Breakfast, or a Twining's Traditional Afternoon, but I've recently begun a caffeine deprivation program. Not because I'm a sadist (though maybe I am) but because we are trying for another baby and I want to reduce every possible, conceivable (pardon the pun) risk associated with poor pregnancy outcomes that I can. This includes caffeinated beverages, of which I am now only imbibing one per day.

I know I can't really throw the trying-to-have-another-baby thing in there and then just change the topic. The truth is I can only bare to mention it in passing at the moment, as if it were not really a big deal, as I've become so superstitious that I'm sure saying the words out loud will rob me of the possibility of it coming true, or something insane like that. But of course it's a big deal, and yes, I have much more to say, and hope, and fear about it. I just can't do it right now while I'm in this terribly sad, hopeless state of mind. So instead I make this post about tea, and why I found myself out in the misty fog planting peppermint and spearmint seedlings.

Apparently anyone can grow mint. I've been told it practically grows itself. It's got such a hold on life that you need to contain it in a pot or else it will take over your entire garden, colonising the earth with its leafy progeny. I spent about two hours at the nursery choosing the right pots. I've made major life decisions in less time than it took to choose a faux-terracotta plant receptacle. I didn't know what size or shape. Self watering or the kind that needs a person to water it? How is there even such a thing as a self watering plant pot? Should the scientists and engineers who came up with that for Yates not be working on much more important, pressing world issues?

Anyway, here they are, plopped in some potting mix and watered straight from our rain tank. Grow, minties, grow. I want fresh tea in the spring,  to drink for the baby I desperately hope will come in the spring. Be my magical elixir. I'm counting on you.

The beginnings of my new herb garden

Peppermint...mmm

Straggly spearmint. . . I think I did a mediocre job of planting this guy

Growing and enduring

My commitment to gardening stepped up a notch this weekend when I attended a gardening workshop run by the Moonee Valley City Council. There's this thing called the Smart Gardening Program that Kate told me about. It teaches residents how to grow their own food and embrace the principles of permaculture, which sounds fancy, but really just means gardening that works with the environment instead of against it by growing the right plans in the right environment at the right time of year in order to reduce water usage, improve the soil, and make your garden more productive for less work. That all sounded good to me! We had to drive all the way to Seabrook for the occasion, which is pretty much in the opposite direction to anywhere you want to go.

We knew we'd reached a part of town where they do things differently when upon arrival in the carpark of the Seabrook Community Centre the first thing we saw was this sign:

We were very relieved when other workshop participants heeded the sign and brought their annoying children inside, where they proceeded to eat all of the tiny teddies that were supposed to be shared amongst the entire group. I'll refrain from saying anything more about that.

Instead, what made the trip worth it, was that I won the lucky door prize! It was a very handy set of gardening tools that were just my size!

To date, I haven't really been that interested in growing vegetables, apart from the odd cherry tomato plant and herbs that I've tried (and failed) to keep alive over the years. The guy that ran the seminar (from Very Edible Gardens) made it sound like an excellent idea, though, so I immediately determined that I wanted to design and grow my very own edible oasis. Or, rather, because I'm lazy and don't really trust my soil identification skills, I want him to come and implement one for me so I can just enjoy looking at it and tending to my rapid, abundant harvest. I want my garden to look as spectacular as some of the examples he showed us, but when I got home and priced his services on the internet, I realised that I can't afford to employ him and will probably have to resort to growing tomatoes and various tea-making herbs in a pot again. Sigh. If you had the spare money, though, I think it would be well worth getting these guys in!

Kate and I breakfasted in Yarraville beforehand, which is far out of usual zone, but it was very pleasant at Wee Jeanie's and not too overcrowded even though there was some kind of yippee festival going on (yippees are apparently what Mark calls rich hippies - hybrid creatures that are part yuppy, part hippy). At the yippee festival, however, I saw for the second time that week, a woman with my pram, except that hers had an actual baby in it and mine very obviously does not. Those little things really get to me and jolt unexpectedly right through my heart.

At breakfast, neither Kate nor I had our 3000 words to show, which should not have been that surprising as we both suck at sticking to things that are hard, even though they are often the things we want to do/achieve most of all. Kate was on the verge of giving up, having had a rough week where she'd fallen off the bandwagon of many of her newly-implemented good habits, such as rising at the same hour each day (very good for sleep hygiene) and riding her exercise bike, both of which had begun to make her feel happier and more energised. 

Kate and I are very similar in the way that we both have grand imaginations and can picture in every detail how we want our lives to be, except that reality very rarely matches those images. We are also both notoriously black and white thinkers and not fans of this thing people call moderation. Thereby, when we don't immediately reach our goals or encounter a problem, we tend to give up and walk away at the first warning that failure might be a possibility. As a result, we alternate between being gloriously happy and excited about the dawning of new endeavours and depressed, hopeless and irritable when we give up despite our best initial intentions. 

If our usual practice prevailed, that would be the end of our novels. But I've learned over the last couple of months the value of a quality called persistence - the practice of picking yourself up after a fall and setting about trying again. It's a quality you see all the time in young children, but one we (and probably lots of other people) seem to have lost as adults. I am a trained primary school teacher and in classrooms and in the playground you can learn a lot about how children persist in all manner of activities without even giving it a second thought. They expect failure, not mastery, when they try something for the first time, so it's not a big deal when they don't get things right. They just try to do it better next time. What a novel concept, huh?! Somewhere along the way we have developed the perception that we need to succeed the first time, no matter how daunting the undertaking we set ourselves. 

From the day Max died I have had to learn to persist whether I've liked it or not. If I did not have some inner belief that I would feel better, or cope more easily the next day then I would not be able to put one  foot in front of the other to get through the last two months, two weeks and five days as I have. I would not have survived. I am enduring only because I realised that I don't have to be OK all the time, or any of the time. I don't have to get over this and I don't have to feel miraculously better. All I have to do is keep going, no matter how small the steps. 

That is what I said to Kate - you must persist! Except I made her cry! She said it was because she didn't like how ugly the word 'persist'  is, but I think it's because she's been feeling as fed up with the world and her place in it as I have. But Kate, when you're happy, I'm happy, so that's a good enough reason to try again, right?! The truth is that I've got no motivation to try and make things better if Kate gives up, so everyone who is reading this blog (all 2.3 of you) have got a vested interest in helping Kate achieve her goals and take action on her plans! 

You can begin by keeping your eye out for her burgeoning greeting card business on Etsy (details soon!) You will be able to stock up on clever cards and gather wit for all conceivable occasions for the rest of 2012 or for the rest of your life if you're into making advance orders!

Now, what, you maybe asking, am I doing this week to help myself keep trying? Well, three things, actually.

1. Walking for a little bit further each day. Today I went for a walk around the tan and kept going despite the fact that less than 500 metres in I realised I was the ugliest and whitest person on the circuit and that I was the only one wearing normal trackpants and not fancy lycra workout gear that wicks away sweat and soothes your muscles. Those things in themselves would be enough to send even a mildly self-conscious person power walking to the nearest botanical sculpture for camouflage. Far more affronting to my sensitive heart was the number of yummy mummies jogging around the track behind designer prams holding gorgeous sleeping babies (and I don't mean in the eternally sleeping kind of way). I walk the last half of the track with tears streaming down my face, but I made it to the end and felt like I'd achieved something positive despite the emotional breakdown I afterwards suffered on Domain Road. I thinking of going back, too, and doing this walk on Monday and Wednesday mornings after work, but next time I may borrow some blinkers from some of my horse friends to make the view a little easier to bear.


2. This week I will also finish revamping my website. I want to start building up my freelance work again as it's been a rough start to the year at my part time job and I've had fantasies of getting the hell out of there for good.


3. I will keep writing. Even if I only write 500 words a week instead of 3000. Remember the story of the hare and the tortoise? Yeah, that!

In short, giving up is not an option! For this week at least...

A burst of positivity

It's amazing what a difference two full nights sleep can bring. I am feeling positive and energised this morning, which is a feeling so rare lately as to be almost unrecognisable to me when I awoke with it this morning. I was up at 6.30am to take Leslie to his counselling appointment and there was a lovely fresh breeze and little traffic - a wonderful combination when travelling back and forth along Punt Road with the windows down.

It's strange that this mood should strike me today as it's been a fairly shitty few days. Leslie has not been well - he's been extremely stressed and sad, moreso than I've ever seen him. He's been off work for a couple of days in attempt to recuperate and take care of himself, as advised by his doctor. To add salt to his wounds, however, yesterday he was made redundant from his job. OVER THE PHONE! Can you believe his employers could partake in such unforgivable acts of bastardry? We knew that the redundancy was likely, as we'd put two and two together over the last couple of months, so it wasn't entirely a shock. But to discover they could not even wait until he returned to work today to sack him in person really floored me. I don't even know how any reasonable Human Resources department would permit such an action. Not only was he not at work, he was home sick. Despicable human beings. But what else can you expect from a bank, I suppose, despite how much they advertise themselves as having fantastic conditions for their staff. I have composed numerous nasty tirades in my head and imagined myself marching down there with a team from A Current Affair, but when they've got so much power there's nothing that can damage their reputation, really.

The weekend's events and feelings have reminded us of something we were told by the home-visiting midwife the day after I was discharged from hospital - that the life we'd just embarked on would become like a see-saw for a very long time. She warned us that there'd be times when one of us finally had some moments of lucidity and lightness, but that they would likely come exactly when they were least welcome; usually when the other person was feeling at their lowest. This is very true of the experience we've had this week, and it is really hard. We both look forward to the day when we feel 'even', instead of pulling in two different emotional directions. But we know there will be a lot of days between now and then, and we have to find a way to give each other space and permission to feel whatever it is we feel - even when those feelings might differ dramatically between us.

One thing that is helping me feel better is this blog. I've found it extremely cathartic to have a space to just expunge all of my emotional gunk. As it's only being read by close family and friends at this stage, I don't have to worry about censoring myself or worrying what people will think as I know that those people, even if they disagree with what I say, will be able to appreciate where I might be coming from, and how the experiences I've had might have led me there.

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm also getting an immense amount of peace from gardening. I know, someone call the authorities because I must have been abducted by aliens! I'm not sure whether it's because I've never really had a garden of my own before so I'm delighting in the ownership, or whether little Max has provided me with a new curiosity about organic things and how they live and grow. I suspect it's a little bit of both, coupled with the fact that I now have two very special plants to look after that remind me of Max. Bunnings is becoming my favourite haunt - I've been there multiple times over the last few days! Today's trip was to buy potting mix for my new 'Mothers Love' rose. Leslie's dad has given us an amazing big pot that he bought many years ago in Malaysia, which will be its new home when we plant it tonight. I'm hungry for plant knowledge at the moment, but I don't exactly know where to find it. Gardening seems like one of those things that comes innately to people, so the very fact that I have to 'learn' it might mean that I'm probably not going to be any good. But I'm going to give it my very best shot, in the hope that you can teach an old dog new tricks after all!

As I mentioned earlier, getting some sleep has also made a big difference over the last couple of nights. In conjunction with my psychiatrist, I have developed some new 'sleep hygiene' strategies. They are painful at the moment, but I'm trusting that they will pay off in the longer term. I'll write another post specifically about them later on, but I've managed two nights of at least 6 hours sleep by making just a few small changes to my routine.

I also got a job yesterday, doing some research assistant work for my PhD supervisor and another professor who has received a gigantic ARC grant. It's only short term, but will give me something that feels worthwhile to do, whilst maybe putting me in a position to do more of the same in the near future.

It must also help that my poppets are arriving today! Anika and Sasha will be in Melbourne until next Friday, which is a super-exciting amount of time to spend with them, and I just can't wait.