on edge

I’ve had a week of feeling irritable and on edge. Put upon I would say. Oscar attached to me in one form or another 23 out of every 24 hours. Kids and husbands with coughs and colds. A constant migraine and an achy back. Clothes covered in leaky breast milk and regurgitated breast milk. Washing and folding and putting away. Cooking and mopping and making the beds. Envy at trips to Dublin and trips to London and trips to the coffee shop that Brian makes. Horror at my big boobs and wobbly thighs. Less that they are big, more that they are not what are usually mine.

I decide to paint my nails to feel slightly, I don’t know, slightly other than I do. Painting your nails burgundy in bed while feeding a squirming baby does not lead to well painted nails. 

I look at a photo of someone I was in school with who has just won the most prestigious architecture prize in Australia and I wonder why I didn’t do that instead. I was always smart in school. In short, I’m feeling sorry for myself. It’ll pass.

***

Oscar has started smiling. He sleeps in the nook of my arm like a small animal. After his bath his hair is like a baby ducks. At moments like these I do not care about my leaky boobs. 

***

Gardening with Oscar in sling … occasionally successful !

In the evenings in bed before I fall asleep I read gardening books. I read about edible gardens and no dig gardens and vegetable gardens and kitchen gardens. Herbaceous borders and perennial borders and mulching and composting and when to cut back. My favourite title is Why Can’t My Garden Look Like That? 

I want to do so much. Build a compost heap, stack the wood, tear up the evergreens and bay trees and pampas grasses (in the savanna we are not), prune the hawthorn hedge, mulch the beds, clear the vegetable patch, mulch the vegetable patch, cover the vegetable patch in plastic (it’s no-dig, darling), powerhouse the cobble lock, paint the outside wall, heck, paint the whole house. So far I have just managed to clear a few piles of leaves. 

I write down the names of plants that might grow well, imagining my luscious beds spilling over, butterflies drifting, bees droning. 

Agapanthus, Lavendula, Fuchsia, Perovskia, Smokebush, Mock orange, Bellflower.
Squash, lovage, kohl rabi.
Chicory, chard, sage.
Jerusalem Artichoke.
Mascara, Lollo Rosso, Bresson Rouge.

I walk round our garden and spot the first daffodil of the season. A shy opening down the end under an apple tree. A promise of things to come. Blackbird music follows me as I walk. Snowdrops flash from behind a giant fern.