Growth in Lockdown
It feels like right now fear and hatred and stupidity are spurting into the world with alarming speed and indifference, like rampant strands of ivy spreading and suffocating and taking over. It is too fast.
Simultaneously, in our domestic bubbles, encased in the four walls of our homes, it feels like things are moving too slowly, or not at all. Nothing changes day by day. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish any ‘newness’. Hours blur into each other, and at the end of each day we are confronted with the nothingness of existing in our small, isolated worlds.
We have started to grow plants. This is something I previously had no interest in – some of them looked nice, but they seemed like far too much effort. Now, I am consumed by the progress of our tomato plants, our chilli, and our parsley. I am watching with a genuinely loving eye, our new calathea plant thrive – opening and closing its leaves as day and night come and go – a beautiful way to mark the passing of time.
The plants line our windowsill, craning their necks and contorting their bodies in order to find the sun. What a wonderful symbol for our lives right now; stuck against the glass, plastering ourselves against our walls, seeking just a little bit of light. They smell good too; the earthy freshness of the tomato plants reminding me of home, where my Dad grows rows of tomatoes in the greenhouse. And to be transported back is both lovely and cruel - because I can’t be there. To be reminded of the carefree, endless summer days of childhood when I have never felt like more of an adult, confronted with practical fears and social concerns, hurts and aches.
But despite the weight of my emotional projections, these plants grow, and it is so exciting to track their progress. I didn’t understand the patience required to encourage life in a garden or in a pot of soil. For me, it just didn’t seem worth all of the sweating and lifting and digging, especially when my senses could be commanded by much more immediate, vibrant and chaotic things. But these loud and immediate joys have gone for now – all those places I would rather go and the things I would rather see are closed off. They have been muted and put away, and the quiet, understated satisfaction enclosed within a brown plastic pot is suddenly all that’s left. The potential in a seed, and the beginning of its growth is more absorbing than I thought; it is really beautiful.
There is something very calming in having to wait for something, having to be patient. There isn’t as much to distract us anymore. I have limited options with how to spend my day. In my isolation I am just looking at the leaves and getting giddy when I realise that they seem a little taller, or have changed direction overnight. Small, almost indistinguishable change is magical and is a relief when outside, change is always momentous and constant.
I have called our calathea Cathy and have started saying ‘Goodnight’ to her. I trapped one of the tomato leaves in the wooden blinds, and mangled it and felt guilty and frustrated with myself. I am having extensive and concerned discussions with my partner about the white mould that has grown on the soil surface of our ginseng tree. Having decided it is down to over-watering, I now press the soil with my fingertips each morning and mutter to myself, like a compulsion. It is now very important to me that it survives.
There is a lot that I miss about normal life, but this minute focus on detail, the quiet contemplation of the veins in leaves and the little hairs on stalks is new to me and it is something I hope I can find room for when all this is over. I hope that I don’t crush these delicate lives when my own becomes bigger again.
I can’t even imagine the excitement I will feel when we get our first tomato.
