My poor garden, I simply can’t give it the attention it needs right now. It gets on in the way most wildlife does in the absence of human intervention: it grows and grows, and whatever started out tallest and strongest and most favourably positioned grows best.
I try to keep it low maintenance, because gardening is the first thing I drop when I’m short on time or energy. I limit weeds by planting things as closely together as I can get away with, and mulching around them. I encourage birds, and they do most pest control for me. Right now most of our summer veges have bolted, but I’ll leave them flowering to feed the bees.
Creative writing is the second thing to go when life gets busy. Again, I try to keep things ticking along without too much work. In stolen moments I re-read old drafts, sometimes making easy changes, sometimes simply bringing the text back to mind before putting it aside again. Occasionally I see that a piece of writing is going nowhere, and I can suddenly, happily delete it. Other pieces survive and slowly grow through these periods of nurture and neglect.
When home life takes most of my attention with all its mundane admin and hair-raising curve balls, a kind of natural order settles in. I tinker around the edges of my creative pursuits. I pull the odd weed, cull the odd sentence. I clear out what is withered and spent, and leave everything else to do its own thing.
While that all sounds and feels pretty positive – a good balance to have struck – there are many moments in every day when I would rather be writing or gardening. But when I’m listening to my children chatter as they play, or the moon is full and shining on the bay and we’re talking late into the night, my garden and writing can grow on for a while without me. I am right where I need to be, and I am growing too.
Tania Sickling 