Like the Christmas Rose, vivid amongst the mulch - Life only shines this bright when... learning a new way to walk

One shop, one pub: Winter on Tresco... Craving proper bread... no problem, I'll make my own, how hard can it be? (And a snippet from my book)

Plants I miss - Helleborus, common name, Christmas Rose.

DECEMBER BRAIN: Apologies in advance - this newsletter is the result of what happens to the brain at this time of year. I’ve departed from sanity and gone into full, Christmas build-up HEAD F**K, the anticipation of going home, wanting to go, not wanting to, thinking of relatives, needing rest, a holiday? blah, blah… Oh SHUT UP mind. Therefore what follows is a series of diversions. I’m telling myself again, it’s not the outcome that matters, but the creative process, and saying, it’s ok to be myself.

I have not see any Hellebore on the islands. Sometimes in the night when I can’t sleep I close my eyes and imagine my garden at home on the mainland; right now, they will be there - the hellebores, under the apple tree, nestled amongst ferns, the dark burgundy, the speckled pink.

Watching the Sleepers - Ernie makes a wonderful foot rest. I hope I didn’t just take photos and then rush back to the living room. I’m quite sure I sat for a while, watching him sleep.

So, here I am, in Winter, where I love to lay down a thick blanket, tuck plants in under layers and say, goodnight. Here we are, deep in the Mother Nature’s restorative cycle. (If you let her, she will carry you, always. She is a guide.) A warm welcome to my new subscribers, over 50 in the last two weeks, thank you for joining. For an aspiring writer there can be no better feeling. It’s a sense of belonging I have craved for decades. Loving Loss and Forget-me-nots is my companion on a journey with no end. These pages are my notes on finding ways to nurture loss, continuing to love my son, and becoming a gardener. As they say, grief is made of love, grief is love with nowhere to go. So finding places to put your love is vital. Loving Loss is vital. We are carrying a fragile creature inside our coats. I often have to physically hold my heart, as if it might fall out of me. Loss needs nurturing, like the organic matter in your mulch; it will make your roses beautiful, and RESILIENT.

For newcomers - After losing James I tried to remain in my old life but after three years, I just didn’t fit. In those early days I was surrounded by birds. They’d come with a message. You are a gardener, they said. I now live with my husband and dog on the small island of Tresco in the Isles of Scilly, 28 miles from Land’s End, Cornwall, England, about 80 miles from home in North Cornwall. (The UK, btw, as a lot of you just joining are in the US.) I’ve not come far, but I am in another world, cheating reality, a billionaires bubble, a silent paradise, (where a chicken in the only shop is £28), a sub-tropical botanical dream. Last week I asked for help on the Substack Notes feed, (See this short note, Nerine field) pleading support, for more subscribers to help me impress publishers with my substantial following. I want to convince them that my story is worthy - how the healing nature of plants, legal and illegal, is of great interest. What an amazing response I have had. Thank you. One thing I miss about being a parent is PRIDE. Thank you

Substack

, this is a place for me to recreate pride.

Gimble - looks like the Caribbean but it’s FREEZING. I can manage a 90 second dip! It’s worth it - afterwards the feeling is electric.

If you have just joined me and you are in the early stages of loss you might find comfort in my early newsletters: Creating Out Space. Also, details of medicinal cannabis, how we eased our son’s suffering with RSO, Rick Simpson’s Oil Method. James thrived on it. (But we should not have had to do that alone, breaking the law, funding ourselves.) It’s a crime that cannabis is not being prescribed for cancer treatment. Read our story here in Cannabis Health News, online magazine. Thank you for all your comments. It means more than words can say.

I now have nearly 300 subscribers. My last publication was viewed over 600 times and the likes on this post are still climbing:

This writing community is a sanctuary. This week I’ve been reading about so many brilliant things, a wonderful meditation on the word Zen, in

David Whyte

newsletter. Also enjoying

Claire Amritavani Brown

’s The Moon Shed,

Jo Thompson

’s The Gardening Mind - her Rose Advent Calendar is marvelous. And

Margo

’s Poems. Oh, and a brilliant read from

Danielle

’s Grief Casseroles called This Is Shit. She writes of how hard Christmas is, her first without her partner, she says, ‘Christmas is grief set ablaze.’ What a line. This is what words can do, they echo, vibrate, resonate, words connect us, give us meaning.

What’s it like, this strange life. Simple. Few choices to make. One shop, open 10-2. And the pub. That’s it. Not a single coffee shop. 40 hours of gardening a week. It’s all consuming. Outdoors all day, often head to toe in waterproofs.

When I saw the snow on the evening news last week I felt my heart, alive in my chest - a wrench, a sting. I WANT TO BE THERE, AT HOME, IN THE SNOW! Proper cold does not come to Tresco. I will not scrape ice from my windscreen this winter. I will ride my bike in rain and wind. By the time I arrive at work my makeup has run down my neck. Why wear makeup? I hate my red face. Even though I’ve had it for 45 years, I can’t make peace with it. I look like I either have a bad cold or a massive drink problem. I only have a small drink problem as the pub is now closed Mon, Tues, Wed! Anyway, like the soil under thick mulch, like the hibernating wildlife, we need our beauty sleep, so today I have taken a day’s holiday. My whole body hurts. I have over-done it, pulling out brambles and grass in trailing threads, moving Agapanthus, Agave, sawing branches. I’ve found many struggling plants under enormous pelargoniums. They are so domineering. I’m being brutal, cutting right back - because no frosts will come to do the job. Everything is evergreen. My back aches, knees are sore. My wrists are feeling the strain from my secateurs. Jessica, get the loppers. Right tool - right job.

Standing tall, proud, I allow the feeling of being a tree to hold me up.

It’s easy to invent a new self living here in this strange bubble but sometimes I catch myself, falling into the gap between old self and new, and I realise, I have not cried for days. What’s this? I am really quite ok. The sudden jolt brings a yukky, sickly sensation, because time seems to take me on, away from James. Crying, when it comes, is as intense, but shorter. A quick release, then on again. The release is painful and yet feels good. I think it’s unhelpful that we’ve been conditioned to see crying as painful. Is it really? Or is it the thoughts that are painful? How does it really feel to cry, without thoughts attached? Next time you cry, notice how it feels, go into your body, leave thoughts behind. You might be surprised. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve lost a precious possession or a pet, a person. Loss is physical and demands to be acknowledged. Otherwise it just follows you, gets under your skin, makes stillness impossible. I still find it hard to cry in front of people, apart from Simon. Poor Simon sees it all.

I continue daily to feel my love for The Caramel Herd. They bring me joy. I take videos/photos. But there is nothing like just standing, listening to the chewing, watching their hot breaths, watching them watch me. I become A BODY, absorbing something invisible, something nourishing.

16th November. It’s Saturday morning. 5.30. We have been given Saturdays off for the winter. What relief. I am here, tucked in between wall and sofa at my tiny table by the window.

Simon and Ernie are still asleep. I’m looking at recipes. I want to make bread. How hard can it be? (Did my Dad teach me how to make bread? NO. He was too busy.) My father created a successful business, shops all over North Cornwall, selling delicious bread and cakes, Cornish PASTIES. I should be able to make a simple white loaf. The bread in the shop is limited. I want an average normal loaf. I have a toast addiction. I don’t want sliced supermarket style bread loaded with preservatives. I don’t want the £5 sourdough that’s hard and dry. Why does no one on Tresco make normal bread? They’d sell out every day. I guess no one wants to get up at 3 am. So, I buy strong bread flour and dried yeast. The recipe sounds simple. All I have to do is concentrate. (Oh dear.) I don’t have any scales. No problem. Quick google search says 500 g of flour = 4 cups. I measure the cups into a bowl. 7g of yeast is 2 and a quarter tea-spoons. In those first seconds - where did my mind go? Was that 4 cups or was that 3? I had to measure it out again into another bowl. But because I’d sieved it, the structure had altered. It didn’t say to sieve it. It looked a lot more now. An hour later, there is flour everywhere, and a pile of dirty bowls. OH MY GOD, this is a nightmare. I can’t remember if I put the salt in, so I put half the amount in, in case I did - or I didn’t. The dough seems wet. It says resist adding more flour, but I can’t help myself because it’s too sticky to handle. The recipe says 100 presses! Presses? What happened to the word kneading? I lose count around 15. Another recipe says 10 minutes. 100 presses in ten minutes? I’m totally lost because I’ve looked at so many recipes. Some say add sugar. Proving times vary. The claggy cement-like mixture is on my face, in my hair, the taps, my jumper… I add more flour. The dog has gone to hide in the bedroom. After two sets of alarms and three hours later what comes out of the oven is a stunted golden brick. But when I cut into it the texture is beautiful. Google says I probably had the wrong size tin, or I didn’t prove it for long enough. Dad would laugh if he saw it. But it was edible. Lacked salt though. In so many ways I am my father’s daughter, shy, self-conscious, over-thinking, anti-social. But I am no baker. I’m doing it all again today but have asked Simon to measure out the ingredients for me.

Christmas Trees, by James Edwards. I love the heart in the middle.

Today is the 21st November. But I’m suspended in September. It’s beginning to feel strange - the way we linger between hot and cold. The only extreme is the wind. Since April it’s been between 12 and 20 degrees. Yesterday as the country froze, I felt chilly for the first time. I think it went below 10. It’s 7 am. I have been editing a letter to a literary agent since 6. I have included in the letter, the first three lines of my memoir, THIS BOY:

Once upon a time there was a little boy called James. He was never little. Right from the start, he was solid, like his bones were lined with something -something unbreakable. He was made of silver and gold, and secrets – never to be told. 

The Survivor, December flowering Cistus - defiant and taking over the bed. They don’t really like being pruned but are everywhere, lolloping over the succulents. The fight for space makes an untidy habit. I’ve been cutting off the lower branches, whether it likes it or not - sometimes it’s kill or cure!

No More Walking Like Stick Wife

I remember, on a different day - feeling strong, seeing the light changing at dawn, I asked James - do you mind if I don’t write about you for a while? No of course not Mummy, write about plants. You need to start living now. It was early morning. I was out walking the dog alone on Pentle Bay. I was thinking about something I’d seen on Instagram about PLUTO in AQUARIUS. I don’t know what Pluto is doing in Aquarius. Couldn’t concentrate long enough to read it, but I am an Aquarian, and, maybe I just thought - it’s time, my time, to be fearless, to be direct, even blunt, to feel fulfilled - with my oldest passion - writing. I’ve been doing it since I was 11, no idea why. I just knew I had to fill pages. That’s 35 years of diary keeping. Dozens of notebooks crammed into hidden spaces. Anyway, alone, I suddenly became aware of my body, how I was walking - guarded, stiff and very slow, as though I’d been out there for days. A change occurred. I felt something. I believe the shifting planets were giving me a new awareness. And then, Eliza popped into my head. The dawn was stretching a cold pink light across the sky, the birds were singing, and I thought - I want to WALK LIKE ELIZA.

Eliza has the most wonderful walk. She is the restaurant manager at The Ruin Beach Cafe here on Tresco. She’s off on her winter travels now. I’ve seen photographs of her in Florence on FB. In the summer after work while Simon and I sat with our cold beer, I found myself watching Eliza. I suppose it’s my age, a new perspective, noticing how fresh-faced and springy young people are. And of course, I am now reacquainted with my pre-child self, life open-ended; I am my lost twenty-something again, and yet I am 45, and entering a whole new sense of self. (A confused mess.) When I worked at The River Cafe in London in my 20’s, I never walked like Eliza. I was lost in my head. Eliza is firmly in her body, shifting her weight from hip to hip, head and shoulders relaxed, she has a firm stride. I watched the cocktails she carried, with her upturned fingers, proud, holding the tray of Martinis, high, - precious liquor, perfectly balanced, steady against the rim of the iced glasses - she walked the terrace, never spilling a drop, as if the restaurant was a stage; the turquoise water and white sand below, the audience. In the chaos of diners, children and dogs, the sound of boats arriving and leaving, she was a picture of calm and quiet confidence.

What was it about her walk? I tried to embody that feeling. Light on my feet. Not dumping all my weight in my ankles. Thinking about this, as I walked on a chilly November morning, how Eliza bounced from the balls of her feet, made me suddenly so aware of how I walk, heavy, my spine wanting to curl up and over, crooked like stick wife from The Stick Man story. And I thought, that’s it - NO MORE. So many years of walking like this, hips carrying pain, shoulders wrapped around my ears, neck crunched, middle back braced for impact. NO MORE. Yes, I can still grieve, I can still love, and long for my son. I am not leaving him behind. I don’t have to carry the pain in my body. Here you go, a reawakening, PLUTO in Aquarius, here you go, please take my pain and make shooting stars from it, or whatever it is you’re doing. (I’ve just looked it up. It’s no small event. Apparently a world-changing two decades is upon us. Fascinating. I must embrace transformation.)

Bristol 2017. James in his first week of radiotherapy, and first week of medicinal cannabis, SMILING EYES.

Early December- stay here, don’t look ahead. I’m holding on. Christmas can wait. (And it can F-Off too.) Look around - it’s the first week of December. Winter is here - but it’s mild. Plants keep on growing. I’ve book flights home for Christmas. £700 for the two of us, a 15 minute flight! £50 for the dog! Broke again. Temperatures below 9 or 10 degrees are rare here. Pruning rules do not apply. At home I would not prune until spring. I feel like I am taking winter’s safety blanket away. But if I don’t start I’ll never get it all done. There are only four of us.

Being a good gardener is learning what needs pruning and what can stay. Many plants here like Pelargoniums are not annuals but perennials so they needing controlling. There is so much in flower, it’s not like December at all. Daffodils will flower over Christmas. Osteospurmums were in full bloom last month. And what are these thriving little ground cover plants we call weeds? Why is the unknown, not purchased or planted, called a weed - something unwanted? Learning to recognise the seedlings can save your knees and back and the soil. Let them stay and fill in the winter months, weed in the spring. Chamomile and foxgloves, heather… so many growing wild here. Be curious, take photos, look them up - often they are gentle and harmless, sometimes they are medicinal, pretty, they are here to feed the soil, heal the soil. Know the bullies and remove them, yes, but ‘Weeds’ are plants who know what they are doing - there for a reason - to protect the soil from the cruel rain and winds. Soil can take 500 to a 1000 years to make itself. It’s so precious. So don’t let it be naked, don’t let it get too cold, don’t let its goodness be washed away!

We must embrace our differences and find a balance. We cannot be too tidy. The absence of guests brings a wonderful time to be messy. Bruno, one of the brilliant gardeners on our team, calls me Messica, because I am a whirlwind of discarded branches, lost tools and poised plants, here and there, throwing out pruning’s over my shoulder, leaving piles everywhere. Rake the leaves onto the beds, I tell him - but he is still ready with leaf blower. He looks at me like I am completely insane. (I think he’d hoover the beds if he could.) And really, in a way he is right. This is gardening for show, not so much for nature. There are places to be tidy and places to leave scruffy. The balance in our team is good. We must be relaxed and not have one way of doing things. Imagine if we were all like me? OH MY GOD, we’d all be sacked. This is commercial gardening. I have to accept that. And really, oh, how I would love a tidy mind. Both Bruno and Roy are incredibly methodical. Simon too. They concentrate beautifully, starting a job, finishing it. My jumping bean scatterbrain wants to suggest… the afternoon somewhere else? Another garden, a pressing matter in another corner of my mind, a different job?

‘NO, Messica! We are finishing this,’ they say. I know I drive them mad. They are good for me. But I can’t care too much. I am what I am. But I live in hope that one day being untidy will be more fashionable because, on a serious note, our soil is precious. We can’t ignore it, we can’t live in the past putting on a tidy show. We have to change mindsets, allowing the brown and burnt skeletons of plants stand proud, saying, Yes, maybe I am no longer looking my best, providing pollen, but I am providing shelter, home, food, so let me die in my own time - settling back in, slowly turning to natural fertilisers, organic matter, mulch.

Natural processes surely must take priority. I am optimistic that even guests who have been coming here, as they say repeatedly, for over 40 years, can appreciate that the days of immaculate, sterile gardening are numbered - if not OVER. Let go of perfection - by the time I’ve finished another 50 gardens the ones I did in November will be full again! I am not trying to get anywhere, I am just here, amongst it.

I will not post again before his birthday, so I want to write for the 28th December, 6.30pm - Happy Birthday, my darling boy, JAMES. Did I ever tell you, he shot out of me like a rocket - no time to waste. One minute I was eating a roast lunch at The St Kew Inn. I was two days overdue— and then a mad dash, a great awakening, a coming to life - two hours later, there he was, in my arms, screwed up and grumpy like an old wise man woken from a deep sleep. Life would never be the same again.

I could try to think of him turning 10 years old. But this really is impossible. Instead I like to imagine that James celebrates all the ages, many birthdays, because HE IS an ancient spirit, been here before and born again and again, he’s everything - FREE, free from time, he is everything that makes love come to life, he is electricity in the air after the rain, he is the sun going down, settling, resting in the earth, and then at dawn, he is a fledgling’s first flight, a drifting lazy cloud on a summer’s day, a meandering stream, a twinkling star; he is everywhere, all at once. He is wonder itself…I force myself to write this positive stuff, because otherwise how can I live? Some people reading it might feel angry, because none of that resonates. And he’s not here, and it’s SO SHIT. All of this is ok, all at once. Nothing makes sense but feelings just need to be felt.

Sleep well, James. I love you xxxxxxxxxxxx

Please help me reach more readers. My words are free. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU.