As we head into a New Year uncertain of the future, anxious for our loved ones, grieving our collective losses, the feelings can become overwhelming. The impact that Covid-19 is having with its unrelenting spread is setting the scene for a pandemic of mental health difficulties for a long time to come.
How then do we safeguard our mental health and wellbeing?
For me personally I have found great solace in the natural world, I have been fortunate to work on our flower plot. Yesterday I had finished a raised bed and sat for a while mindfully appreciating that particular moment of time, the slight breeze on my face, the frostiness in the air, the chatter of birds, the connection to the very ground I sat on, the peace and the thought that in that particular frozen moment everything was good, at least for me in my microcosm.
Its January and if you look closely signs of new life are stirring, the first shoots of narcissi emerging, winter Aconites beaming beneath the trees, hellebore flowers gracefully unfurling.
So my attention is turned to seeds. The first to sow indoors for our veg plot will be aubergine, chillies and broad beans. For the flower plot Sweet peas and ammi.
Sowing seeds is an exercise of hope in itself, it never ceases to amaze me that these tiny desiccated vessels hold life within them and the promise of bountiful harvests in the months to come, they are just waiting for the right conditions to arrive to start the plants into growth.
Gardening they say is an exercise of hope over adversity. We constantly battle the elements, pests, diseases, disorders and all manner of other issues and problems. But the plants always come through, maybe not quite in the way we had always expected. We have good times ahead, the plants will take their own time to come to fruition, and we can help them along, but they are the constant in our ever changing world.
Eventually the pandemic will be over and then we will need to come together even more than during the darkest times. We are sowing the seeds now in our kindness, our compassion and our humility. Helping those more vulnerable than ourselves, protecting them by doing the right thing. Let’s hope that our seeds of kindness will grow into a truly beautiful harvest.
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