Gardening and writing are similar in a number of ways, and complement each other. Words bear a resemblance to seeds. Acclaimed authors are often heard to describe their craft as a mystery, as if some secret force within is guiding the pen. They might start with a basic plot and some notion of the characters required to inhabit it, but soon find their fictional people becoming larger than life, as real or even more real than their family and friends. These actors on the page begin to write their own story, one which the apparent author becomes obliged to merely record rather than direct.
My mother-in-law, a retired professor of English literature, once gave me good advice on the subject. If you want to write, she said, then sit down with a pen and paper; nothing will happen unless you do. Even if you have little or no idea what it is that you are trying to inscribe, just sit down – and watch the words appear.
The analogy hardly requires spelling out. Suffice it to say that you won’t end up with a wood if you don’t plant the trees. Definitely do not worry about whether you will be there to observe your creation when it matures. Just enjoy the process for as long as you can.
When given the opportunity to talk about the garden at Airdlin Croft I often highlight the happy association of rhododendrons and hostas. Not all rhodies are naturally woodland plants though the large-leaved species generally do best within the shelter of trees. Hostas are also mostly shade-tolerant plants. Growing the two genera in close proximity allows a spacing of the woody plants that takes into account their potential height and spread while providing ground cover with their herbaceous companions. Left alone, the ericaceous component will ultimately smother the physically-challenged neighbours. I refer to this inevitable dynamic as a strategy for old age.
At some time in the future – hopefully a long way off – the ability to garden at the current output of physical energy will decline; there is no getting around it. Right now, the maintenance of a collection of hostas, in the greenhouse and the garden, requires a good deal of work; whereas once established, rhododendrons tend to take care of themselves. They just get bigger and better. So when physical infirmity gets the upper hand I plan to slacken off a bit; but hopefully will still manage to muster the mental acuity for writing. That’s the plan. I have elsewhere suggested that optimism is a necessary component of the gardener’s DNA.
However, there is no need to discover decrepitude before picking up the pen (and I still do use a pen for the first draft, preferring to minimise the proportion of waking hours facing a screen). One of the consequences of gardening in these latitudes is a necessary submission to the seasons. In mid-winter here we enjoy barely six hours of daylight, and even during those the weather can render outdoor activities less than pleasant, freeing up much time for scribbling.
Furthermore, as any gardener knows, much of the inevitable work outside is repetitive and fairly mindless – a fact that probably prevents the non-gardener from getting involved but to the green-fingered pragmatist becomes another string to the bow: an opportunity to think about something else, to daydream, to put together thoughts and ideas that a more demanding schedule might prevent - the skeleton, perhaps, of a poem, a novel, or autobiography that can be allowed to materialise once one is forced indoors. Of course, not all introspection is necessarily advantageous to pursue; but at least some of the ingredients may turn out to be worth combining in hard copy.
Hostas and rhododendrons; gardening and writing; bread and butter – having unwittingly arrived at that last metaphor, and in so doing proved a point made above, I should admit that this strategy for old age contains a compromise willingly undertaken when a long time ago I chose the life of a gardener. This was unlikely to be a sure-fire route to a fat pension – and so it has worked out, with no world cruises or flashy cars on the agenda, and perhaps a rather flimsy safety-net should old age cut up rough. But no regrets either, yet.