When I moved into the cottage I live in now the garden was a mess. The house had been empty for years and the garden had become overgrown with weeds and thorny shrubs. Before letting it, my landlords brought in somebody to clear it, and while they got rid of all the wild plants, they left a mess behind. Dead, dried plants on the ground, lots of rubble, thick roots from the chopped down shrubs, and lots of broken glass from some picture frames which had been left outside. It looked like a set for a post-apocalyptic film. I have never had an interest in gardening, so I had no plans whatsoever of doing anything about it.
But as it happened, I did. And it was the most therapeutic thing I've done possibly ever. I have alluded in this blog and on Instagram that I have a thing with SAD. I say 'a thing' because I've never gone to my GP about it and had it confirmed. So that it's SAD is guesswork. But I do have a degree in psychology, so it's educated guesswork. ;)
The time interval between the low mood coming on and lifting is so short that I've never acknowledged it as an issue until recently.
The window you see in the background is my sewing room.
But the few winters I have been noticeably down, and the most recent winter was not great. I decided to make a massive career change and I poured all my time into it. I neglected everybody around me and spent all my free time cooped up in the spare room, hunched over my laptop, working on this goal. There were no major issues with my mood because I was motivated, driven and focussed. And that kept me happy. But it was getting exhausting working the day job, coming home and then focusing on something else demanding and not really relaxing.
And then I failed. And that coincided with my usual January low mood. So...I was pretty unhappy.
However, if it is one thing I've learnt during my years of repressing bad mood, it's that taking on a completely unrelated challenge helps. So when I saw my professional goals fail (only to rise from the ashes like a phoenix 5 months later, but I didn't know that would happen at the time), the emotional storm that followed had to be channelled into something. Thus, I plunged myself into unchartered territory. Gardening.
I had made a very lame attempt in the past, when I bought two tomato plants and a couple of strawberry plants and attempted to grow them in terracotta pots on the windowsill. I only fed them water and neglect and surprise, surprise, they died. But this time I utilised the resources available to me. The wealth of knowledge that is my neighbour, a retired professional gardener, my mom who has the greenest fingers in the world, and of course the Internet.
And...the garden is thriving. I have suffered losses to natural forces, including an army of slugs and a brutal storm that pulled several plants out of the ground. But the rest is doing great.
Now that plants, which I've grown from tiny seeds (or in the case of the strawberries and tomatoes, from seedlings from the garden centre) are producing fruit, I am beaming with pride. But more importantly, the garden helped me get through a very unhappy time and back to my happy self.
I ran a half marathon last year for Restore, an Oxforshire mental health charity. A lot of their work involves their members getting involved in gardening work as a form of therapy. I loved the sound of that, but in hindsight I know it didn't fully resonate with me until now. Now I get it.
So as you can imagine, I have a lot of love for my garden. So much that I devoted a sewing project to it. I had been digging, planting, weeding, watering and everything else in old jeans and wellies. But I felt the garden deserved better, so I decided to make a pair of dungarees specifically for working in the garden.
I used the Turia pattern from Pauline Alice. Lovely pattern and great instructions. It's a bit time-consuming with all that topstitching, but I found it very satisfying to just sew a whole lot of straight lines in a fabric that behaves when handled. My only issue with the pattern was the legs, which are way too wide for my taste. So I tapered them quite a bit. When I finished them I wished I had tapered them a tiny bit more, but I flat-felled the seams and didn't fancy ripping them up, so I left them as they are.
The only other deviation from the pattern instructions I did was to only use one zipper, instead of one on each side. And I have no problems getting in and out of the dungarees.
I am so happy with these dungarees. And my garden. So here is a photo bomb of both.
