Spring is my favourite time of year, and I know I’m not alone when I say that. When I was younger, Autumn was my favourite season. I think I was in a place where I was always busy, working hard and so Autumn marked this magical time of year where it was acceptable to stay indoors and get cosy all day long. It was ok to spend an entire weekend watching movies and drinking hot chocolate and I craved that so much thanks to my inability to slow down and give myself time to relax at any other time in the year.
Now that I’m older and have learned the power of the word ‘no’, Spring has become my new favourite time. It signifies the beginning of the gardening growing year and holds promises of flowers, crops and an abundance of greenery. Birds come out, seedlings start sprouting and tulips throw up their leaves with promises of beautiful flowers to follow shortly.
I’m a bit of a planner if I’m honest. Even when I was little, I used to love the start of a new school year simply because I could start a new planner and organise my life ready for the months ahead. I love the idea of being able to start over, to erase any of the mistakes you may have made the previous year and just begin again. That fresh heap of mulch spread over raised beds fills me with the same excitement as a new planner would all those years ago.
Of course, nowadays I’m a little older and wiser and I realise that erasing all past mistakes is not only impossible, but rather silly and pointless. You see, we learn more from our mistakes than we do our successes and this is never more obvious than in the garden. Sure, you could whack everything in one year and it all grows, but an experienced gardener would know this was simply a lucky year. I know, because I had one myself. The weather was perfect, the slugs were almost non existent and everything I put in the ground did really well.
When I started hitting problems, that’s when I began to learn. Really learn. It made me realise that weather can be unpredictable and to not rush with getting vulnerable crops outside. it taught me to protect young crops from pests and birds the second they go in the ground and not a week later. And it showed me that your garden isn’t ever truly in your control and that’s ok. Because our gardens don’t really belong to us. We can’t control them the same way we can control a room in our houses. In a living room you can paint the walls, put up wallpaper, place furniture and it will look the same every day as long as we keep it tidy and clean. But gardens live by their own rules. Plants can suddenly die for no reason, insects can move in and take over whole sections and weeds will pop up all over the place completely changing the landscape of your carefully curated outdoor space.
Spring just makes me feel hopeful. And happy. And excited for the future. And I’m so happy to just embrace it and live in it for as long as it lasts. I no longer wish for the tulips to get on and bloom, instead I enjoy the anticipation of what is to come. I no longer want it to hurry up and be summer.
I have finally learnt the true meaning of patience.
