This winter lulled me into thinking I was someone different. An early end to last year’s events meant that we were done with much of the autumn garden work early and we had this long stretch ahead of quiet. Kevin and I would sit around the dining table in the evenings crafting. I imagined a life for myself as a maker of things again, after years of mostly being a grower of things.
The dark, quiet nights of winter had lulled me into thinking that we were people who had free time to fill. I went out, visited friends, went to exhibitions during the day. My house was even tidy for weeks on end. We were those people.
And then one day while heading out on a school run, I saw the first daffodils flowering at the end of the road and I realised that the seasons were moving and I was behind. I raced home that morning and sowed the first of my seeds in the greenhouse. As I gathered up supplies, I noticed the season’s worth of jobs we’d neglected — the gates to fix, the messes to tidy, the compost to move - not to mention everything that needed to happen to get events up and running again and the event barn weatherproofed.
I wandered around with my phone making lists of everything we needed to do, getting stuck in as I went—moving piles of rubbish, pulling up roots, pruning hedges. Every evening that first week back at it my knees ached and I had to take a bath to ease the knots in my back to ensure I could get up again in the morning. And those mornings start early - with so much to do, sleeping in means 6am when my day starts at a run.
If you’d asked me in the depths of winter if I’d be happy going back to this endless cycle of work, I would’ve told you no. I liked those quiet evenings around the table and could easily imagine my days being just that. I retrospect though, I think it wasn’t amnesia, but rather burnout and craving a break from the relentless problems of the last few years.
Last night, my friend asked me how it felt to be back in the swing of it. I told her that I felt more like myself than I had in a long time. I turn up everywhere slightly grubby - no hope of changing clothes between garden and city. The lady at the post office helped me pick hay out of my hair yesterday and even my clean clothes have bits of paper stuck to them where they went through the wash with seed packets in the pockets. And the true sign of the season - I’ve started getting comments on Instagram again about having dirt under my nails.
And I couldn’t be happier.
Thank you all so much for the support for the Creative Scotland Crowdmatch! I honestly can’t believe how far we are!
We have added a new weekend workshop - a Landscape Photography Adventure with our dear friend Rob Sutherland of Wayward Spirit Photography. Rob is one of our oldest friends and is an incredible landscape photographer based in the Highlands. He is going to take you out and around some of the incredible scenery locally (with gorgeous Autumn light) and help you get comfortable capturing landscapes with whatever camera you have on hand - from phone to DSLR. You can read more about it here:
We have our first events of the year coming up. There are a couple of spots left on our Kidding Around event on the 8th of April, bookable via the crowdmatch site.
We also are hosting a very sweet event with our friend Rox of Trossachs Wild Apothecary.