It’s been such a mild autumn that the beetroot is still growing as fast as I can pick it and I might even be able to push my luck and have it fresh from the ground at Christmas.
Elsewhere in the garden, an apricot seed I planted some years ago just to see what would happen has thrived in terms of size and foliage, but I’m still patiently waiting for even one single fruit to appear.
The uncertainty with which we plant seeds is surely part of the joy of gardening. If everything germinated and produced an abundant crop as planned it feels as if something important would be taken away.
The idea of long germination has been on my mind this week, triggered by the most unlikely of people, blundering ex-Health Secretary Matt Hancock.
On his arrival into the jungle on the TV show, “I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here” I saw a little video of comedian Robin Ince reading from the excellent book “Failures Of State” a passage describing the catastrophic movement of the elderly out of hospitals and back into care homes.
It reminded me that I had given my son the same book for Christmas last year, although I’m pretty sure he hasn’t started reading it.
In fact, I give him a book every Christmas and every birthday, and I’m not sure he’s read any of them.
I consider my behaviour in this regard “a seed”.
I am building up a library for my son in preparation for the day when he, as I did so many years ago, suddenly realises what a joy it is to read and, although I might even be gone by then, reflects on the seed that his father sowed on his behalf.
Then, later in the week, my new CD player arrived. Well, a second-hand one I purchased from eBay to be precise.
My large CD collection has sat untouched for some years but for a long time I have had a conversation with my friend Adam playing in my head.
In a discussion about the rise of music streaming, he told me how and why he still enjoyed the physical media, the discipline to listen to a piece of work from start to finish, and the pleasure it brought him.
He sowed a seed and, although it took a while, this week it blossomed.
A client, lost in grief and stuck in a cycle from which she can’t break free describes herself in frustrated and deprecating terms.
“I want someone to tell me to shut up and just be happy with everything I have.”
Somewhere in there, a seed previously sown, is growing, quite imperceptibly, like the seed that was sown when I once told my therapist in defence of my destructive and hurtful behaviour,
“It’s just not me to do something like that.”
“But it is, isn’t it, because you did it,” he said, sowing a seed.
I remember wanting to feel better and happier much faster than I was able to, in the same way that it would give me great joy to see my son devouring the books I gift to him waiting eagerly for the next.
The main thing though is getting there in the end because most of us are not beetroots, we are far more like apricots.
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