Cactus Killer.
We can’t be good at everything.
In the spirit of re-editing, recycling and reusing material we deem as ‘old’ rather than alive and evolving AND giving myself time to rest and replenish my spirit and fill my cup this summer.
I’d like to greet my new followers here with some of my written material they might have missed from earlier posts — Welcome. I’m so glad you’re here!
Here is a piece I previously wrote about my adventures in gardening.
I hope it gives you the inspiration to have a go, failure is fun! Also in some exciting news, my wonderful neighbour Ken has stepped up to help and Tilda Swinton is now thriving.
:) Love & Power. xo Kali.
Cactus Killer:
It takes real skill to get a reputation as a Cactus killer, not everyone can commit to destruction at this level.
It takes genuine effort to neglect something that needs such minimal effort to survive.
But I am exceptional.
I am capable of whispering: ‘Any last words?’ To many a resilient house plant, so why should I limit myself to murdering indoors when the great outdoors awaits me!
To help balance out my natural abilities and potential in other areas, my gardening at home -[to extend my learning from my volunteer role at a small no-dig market garden farm and attempt to share food with my neighbours] — is a variable experience indeed.
Did you know that around 25 percent of everything grown on a no dig market garden farm dies!?
Wild.
Why are we selling the idea of success as natural, when this is the level of failure involved in a growing season!?
My tomato plant Tilda Swinton (she’s definitely not a Chalamet) has been displaying angry leaves for days now.
Is it too much love?
Is it not enough?
I had no idea growing vegetables would be a metaphor for how I also ruin relationships.
I can’t seem to get the balance right.
I sing her love songs and write her epic letters with poems inside full of all my wildest dreams and innermost thoughts, whilst watering her intensely.
But I completely forgot to ask her what she wants and how she feels.
I put seaweed around her because someone said it was good for soil nutrients, but it dried out in the fury of the sun and apparently you’re supposed to keep it soaked in a bucket first — doh!
So now she’s just surrounded by rotting kelp.
Then it started raining like crazy.
Great for the seaweed but not for the consistency of my watering schedule.
I can just about control my emotions, but not the English weather.
I bought some French Marigold to stop white fly, which I told was a pest of this plant, but in truth her real nemesis is me and my avoidant and chaotic attachment style.
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What can I say, I grew up in chaos with a volatile addict single parent.
I’ve been to therapy. I’m doing my best to heal the intergenerational trauma in our family line, but it takes time and she’ll never understand that… because she’s a Tomato plant.
So I bought her plant food instead, the good kind.
Because I’m romantic.
I can win her back with a large bottle of red.
She is flowering now and I have high hopes for Tilda.
But sadly so does the neighbour’s cat!
Who has been tunnelling into her grow bag to leave a very different kind of gift.
I did not think I would become the kind of woman who stands on her front door step hissing at a cat (such a trope for an aging Queer woman), who I will for the sake of its temperament call Gru.
In less disparaging news the potatoes are showing signs of life and none of Gru’s excrement.
A seagull shat on my French Marigolds and the newly planted flowers in the other big tub, no one needs to see that — I hosed them down.
Wind topples things.
A fox or similar (Gru!) has attacked and dug through everything.
People leave cigarette butts, bottles and food packaging as if it’s a dump, or the backdrop of a Derek Jarman film and not someone’s home.
I strike up conversations with neighbours I hadn’t spoken to before.
They show me their pets, tell me their stories, share memories of gardening and happy times in nature.
People smile at me.
Others look at me like I’m insane.
I keep digging.
The homemade greenhouse I made from an old bottle top of lemonade is working well!
And the Hopi sunflower seed is showing signs of life.
Signs of life.
That’s enough some days isn’t it.
You can’t bloom all year round.
Why would you want to?
It’s a quiet revolution this.
Each small act of Love & Joy;
An act of defiance.
Here is the live footage of this piece with some bonus extra’s:
