Time, Gardens, and the Gift of Slow Watching

Time passes faster as we get older. We no longer count down from vacation to vacation – perhaps only from weekend to weekend. Though since having children, I’ve come to look forward to Mondays most of all, because Mondays are my quiet hours, my time to work in peace. I usually take photos on weekends, so at the start of the week I have both the energy and the headspace to sort through them.

Weekends, on the other hand, belong to family – often with my phone tucked away somewhere, forgotten. And to the garden.

This will be my third season on this patch of earth. The plants are finally beginning to find their footing, though I’ve had to say goodbye to some along the way. The dogwoods, which I’d thought would be easy, turned out to be capricious and prone to illness. I’ve already dug up a few; I’m still waiting on the others, hoping they might change their minds.

The fruit trees we planted last winter – wrestling them into frozen ground, oh my! – spent that season in a quiet dormancy. But this spring they’ve rewarded us with delicate blooms, and now tiny cherries are forming. It feels like a small miracle.

My neighbours are generous with their plants. I don’t understand how they do it: they hand me a modest stick from their garden, I push it into the soil, and a few weeks later – new leaves. That, I think, is what it means to have a neighbour’s green thumb, or perhaps more accurately, a gift of plants given from the heart.

I feel blessed by human kindness – by advice freely offered, by helping hands. And the nature around me satisfies something deep: the need to explore, to care for living things, to learn, to simply be entertained by the world. I collect bird songs on my phone and marvel at how many voices fill just three minutes of recording. The common screech owl, the skylark, the hooded crow, the woodpigeon, the blackcap, the whitethroat – they put on a morning concert as I sit with my coffee, enchanted beneath the tall birches. Their delicate leaves, like sheer curtains, flutter and dance in the wind. If they hadn’t sown themselves here, I might never have realised how beautiful they could be.

I remember being a child on holiday in Podlasie, trying to capture as many of these natural adventures as I could: little kittens, piglets, chickens and geese; meadows in bloom; blueberries, raspberries, strawberries; the first early vegetables from the garden, the first sauerkraut. And unconsciously – or perhaps not so unconsciously – I longed to experience it all again, but in full bloom, whenever I needed it, which was almost always.

If I were starting college today, my path would surely lean more toward the natural sciences than journalism. But we can’t turn back time; perhaps it was meant to be this way.

Or take, for instance, a drive through the forest. You’re cruising along, and there on the road stands a mother crane with her two youngsters. One toddles behind her, the other lingers nearby. I know where they live, where they hide. This coexistence, this quiet respect for their peace, feels like a privilege. I also know where the deer shelter, where they rest, and what time they feed – I see them at the same hours, like clockwork.

As we edge closer to summer, the food becomes simpler and better, requiring little effort to prepare and even less to eat with a sense of reverence and joy. Everything simplifies itself. Our weekly market haul dictates our menu: the last asparagus and rhubarb from Pan, the first new Lord potatoes, the first Rosamund tomatoes, and the first tender seedlings. This year, I’m trying my hand at growing tomatoes. It may work out, it may not – we’ll see.

Dear readers, I wish you a beautiful summer – one in which nature soothes you, surprises you, and reminds you of all that grows slowly and freely.