Slow Sunday

Painting by Catherine Kay Greenup – unsplash

The summer has arrived over here in the U.K., the whole week the sun shone and it was absolutely beautiful. Temperatures reached 28 and on one day 30 degrees where I live. We call this a heatwave. I’d booked off a weeks holiday from work, and spent it at the allotment.

And so, on Monday morning when I set out it was a perfect English summers day. Lush green everywhere shining in the sun, golden light on every emerald living thing as I headed for the park on route to our allotment site.

A patchwork of seamlessly warm sun shining with cool breeze through trees. Trees swaying, leaves all shapes. The park full of people and dogs.

And, families, couples, groups of friends and solitary beings with books.

Swings were swinging, footballs flying, abandoned scooters and trainers lay across the grass. Paddling pool turquoise blue with splashes, as people picnicked and children ran. Sunglasses too, and ice creams, big balls in basket ball nets and small balls on bats. Lots of running and giggling and rolling around while dogs of all sizes, did the same. I closed the gate behind me and made for the allotment.

Allotment progress

I booked this week off work because I needed to focus on cutting down the brambles, they were growing back quicker than I could dig out the crowns.

It was a hard job in our U.K. heatwave, with lots of sitting under apple trees in the communal orchard, to cool off when I felt like this body would fall down from exhaustion.

I learnt, and have always been discovering this; how incredible the body is at carrying on, if you ignore the mind and just push through. My body turning towards the brambles, bending down, chopping off at  the ground, standing up, turning to the wheelbarrow, chopping the long brambles into the barrow, over and over again. At night I found myself seeing brambles when I closed my eyes, for a few days I felt completely hemmed in by brambles then, finally finally, just one tiny corner left that I will cut down today.

Here are some photos.

Next I will start sawing off any that I couldn’t get flush to the ground with the loppers, and another allotmenter is taking the current bushes (they take up too much room for this space, I want to grow my daily larder).

The ground is uneven so I will need to do some levelling out then, the rain is coming next week, once that has soaked the ground I will cover it, and slowly dig out the crowns over the autumn and winter.

I have a H U G E pile of brambles and debris I found mixed into the brambles to get rid of, although the compost bins and wood will be useful, and I need tarpaulin to cover and keep dry the heap, so I can burn the brambles when fires are allowed again in November.

Slowly slowly, I am getting there.

Homeward bound

Back through the park, paddling pool wonder, joyful cries, splashes and swimsuits; while more trainers and flip flops strewed the ground and smells of barbecues started to mix with the air. Sunshine still hot and tree shaded ground soft as velvet. Soon the trees would be silhouetting as people wended away. Trickling along roads, to somewhere.

The next morning, I woke to a tiny bird flying into the tree out front. I watched a cobweb shimmying in the sunlight, gold woven strands fluttering all about and the weather, shifting from summer to autumn and then back to summer again, in a twinkling. When the sun was there, it was like being in the Mediterranean.

My window boxes remind me of the Mediterranean, with sunlight on marjoram, thymes, mints and rosemary. The sun shine makes my cells happy. I’ve been playing Spanish radio to get used to the Spanish language. I realised that listening to a foreign station, breaks up habits of thought and feeling. Your brain ends up, somewhere else; and anything is possible. The sports channels are faster than fast.

It’s nice, being somewhere else in my mind sometimes, as the sun plays hide and seek. The brain really benefits when we find ways to switch off the endless reactive neural activity to life around us. To all those habitual ways of thinking and feeling that don’t serve us. For my new subscribers, that’s why I write about the ever so ordinary, to calm the mind so that if you’re finding yourself in the midst of stressful times, reading these Slow Sunday words can help with that, of course that doesn’t mean ignore your feelings but, perhaps, just perhaps; you’ll find those feelings feel a little less intense.

It’s the evening now, as day paints silhouettes, and I settle into an evening of…

Dreaming.

Wishing you the warmest,

Lucy x