miracles

As I slipped out of the house this morning at dawn I felt like I was keeping a secret assignment with my lover. The allotment land at Landport greeted me and as I entered, I slowed down and deeply breathed in the scent of the soil and the blossoms. I paused… and asked 'Hey. What is the plan?' According to the biodynamic calendar – following the stars and the moon – it is a leaf day. I had brought lettuces to transplant between the runner beans. Artichokes… I transplanted the tiny seedlings, with copper rings against slugs, several feet apart, imagining them a few years from now when they are full grown, bursting out of the ground like mineral fountains. I sowed leeks, Autumn Mammoth, in case the young Mussleburghs weren’t enough. I hoed the paths and sowed red clover on the brassica beds – kales for next winter, my mates Pentland Brig and Ragged Jack. I weeded, mulched, spoke to the little Blue Lake French beans that had been taken by slugs; spoke to the slugs. I grazed on a few early strawberries; They already had slugs and woodlice in them. I looked for the sweetcorn that has not come up and wondered if tomatoes would like to go in to that bed instead. I sowed rocket, imagining its peppery taste. I harvested rhubarb and decided to make a ginger and rhubarb cake. Time passed…

All of us on the allotments are entering in to a relationship with, a commitment to, nature. All of us have our own different ways, we are all learning. As the dew evaporates and the birdsong saturates my soul on this gorgeous May morning, I am in awe of the lessons I am being taught. If I listen, I can enter the flow of life, be guided and allowed a sense of ease and one-ness. It’s about food and bees and friends and life itself.

I went straight from the land to meeting the surgeon who will remove my breast(s) in 3 weeks, as was always planned. I had hoped that by miracle the breast cancer would have disappeared. But the surgeon told me that the miracle is that the tumour has shrunk so much and become manageable. Like the chemotherapy, surgery seems alien to the natural order, yet I am learning a new level of acceptance. I just wanted to say that, because this column is documenting my recovery from cancer and a discovery of how to live, ‘allowing myself to become obsessed with the best part of my life’.

I am the lover and the beloved… This is deep ecology, and here is abeautiful short video called Earth Sprit Action.