Writing: ink, tea and neckache.

On cushions, caterpillars, cats and fidgeting....

Years, or maybe decades ago I declared that my perfect life would be to garden in the summer and write in the winter. I could see my future self very clearly, curled up on the sofa with an ink-blotched notebook, or sitting at a scratched, mug-stained desk, glancing out of the window at a frost-encased world, re-imagining plants in their riotous summer colours and crafting just the right words to describe them.

The first half of the vision is in place, pretty much. I run a plant nursery and am immersed in plants all day, every day, except when I’m doing the accounts, paying bills, fixing the irrigation system, or solving IT conundrums. So yes, for the most part my summer life is firmly horticultural.

Helenium ‘Sahin’s Early Flowerer’ in late September.

As for the winter writing part, dear reader, I confess my vision was a little off the mark. I do have a book on the go, on late summer colour (we’ll come back to that…). I have everything I need to write it at my disposal: first-hand knowledge, seventeen years of photos, access to reference books, living collections and willing experts, and yet… The reality is that writing involves sitting still, and it turns out I am particularly bad at doing this for any length of time. I was a fidget at school and I am a fidget still.

Anything will distract me - a golden, chocolate-rimmed leaf on the point of falling, the postman’s tuneless whistle, the beep of the washing machine proudly announcing the completion of its task, a snoring cat. You name it, I’ll stop for it.

Sitting on a chair at the table isn’t comfortable, even with two cushions under my bottom to keep my forearms off the hard surface. Slouching on the sofa makes the base of my spine go numb. Propped up in an armchair with my laptop on a cushion is OK for half an hour, but my feet slide away from me and I can’t seem to settle. And wherever I sit I get neckache after an while. I had no idea writing a whole book was such an exercise in managing physical discomfort.

I have several strategies to get me back on track, but even these have their traps for the easily-distracted. I might wander out to the veg plot to take Steve a cuppa, and for a stretch and some fresh air, deliberately not wearing my gardening boots so that I can’t join in. But a late hatching of cabbage white butterfly caterpillars have been munching messily through our cabbages. I must have picked off two or three hundred over the course of an hour. It had to be done there and then, boots or no boots, didn’t it?

And there is seed to be collected before it all falls, from this perennial Honesty - Lunaria rediviva for instance. That can’t be ignored now. And then there is the precious, pale daylight to soak up, such as it is in these shortening November days.

But I have promised myself I will have a first draft finished by the end of February. I shall post extracts here over the next few weeks - it’ll help keep me on track. And if it’s dull, or badly written, I do hope you’ll tell me. Additional suggestions for plants are welcome too, as we go along.

Rudbeckia laciniata ‘Herbstsonne’

Right - where was I? Ah yes, I’m on ‘Yellow’. Must crack on. After I’ve let the cat out. And made another brew, and watched the woodpecker climb the tree outside my window upside down again…