Okay, so there’s pretty much no denying it now… the once-vibrant green leaves are beginning to brown and crisp at the edges, some tumble and blow in wet gusts, eddying and clustering in pockets around the garden. Our crops, once unstoppably stretching for the sky, with wide leaves basking in hot sun and tendrils grasping, now sigh, and soften, and ease their way back down to the earth from whence they sprung.
There are many subtle horsemen of the Autumnocalypse; stepping on the first crispy leaf, that cold lick in an otherwise warm wind, the general sigh of the natural world as the relentless waves of summer growth finally crescendo and roll back. The first thick socks day since March, or flicking on a light to see the kitchen in the morning, and cravings for stodgy food and chocolate rearing their ugly heads.
The high summer is over. (This hurts to type.)
As a fully solar powered being who lives amongst pitifully deluded humans who believe that “cosiness” and “curling up” are en par with riding lightning horses of wild hydrogen fire energy into the blazing radiation and temporal infinity of a summer’s day… I’m severely bummed out.
Some are ready to rest. It was, after all, an extremely intense summer; record temperatures, devastating droughts and deluges, eclipses, meteor showers and all the hot crazy action that somehow crams itself into endlessly merging whirlwind days and nights.
I used to happily pop over to the other hemisphere at this time of year, and start planting seeds to embrace some back-to-back endless summer action, but this autumn does feel different… like there’s less of that bottomed-out, hollow, empty feeling when I think about the end of summer.
In reality, this is going to be a pretty busy season for us at the Fife Seed Library. We have a stall at the University of St Andrews Sustainability Summit today to indoctrinate some fresh new students in the delights and joys of seed saving; our plot open day is on Sunday; we’re speaking at the Glen Housing AGM on the 17th of Sept and heading to Saline to talk about seed saving on the 25th. As if that wasn’t enough, we’ll be sowing wildflower meadows on the University of Dundee NHS campus in central Kirkcaldy on 27th and 28th September (please come and help!), and we’ve just moved the cabinet up to St Andrews so we’re obviously celebrating that with a WILDFLOWER SEED PARTY on 8th October (you’re invited obvs) and we’re running back-to-back beginner and advanced composting workshops on the 14th and 21st. Whew.
But what can YOU do? You who might be bummed out too? You who might feel the seasonal change plunge inky tentacles deep into your very soul, wrenching guts and stirring up dark silt… all your missed opportunities, lost loves, evil wrongdoing, avoidable failures, unavoidable decisions and the crushing weight of being a human in an environment exploited and decimated by humans? WELL.
I suggest a walk.
There were times when certain professionals suggested to me that taking a walk would help to alleviate the pressure of the aforementioned murderous thought spirals. I scoffed, I felt misunderstood. Taking a walk when you already feel awful just means that you’re going to take a walk with that mindset, dragging dirty black blankets of woe around your ankles, blindfolded and numb to the reality of the route, because who cares? A bird tweeting or a sweet bramble isn’t going to reverse decades of ingrained trauma… or is it?
Following a recent full moon camp where I woke up to condensation inside the tent (another horseman), I felt a gear shift within me, and instead of emptiness, I discovered a too-full calendar and I saw a coastline positively bountiful with seeds, all standing to attention, swaying, spreading, sending off hope into the wild void. Inspiration borne in an era of decay.
Like a giddy botanist of yore, I rushed home, hung up the tent to drip, and packed my bag with jars, tupperware, my flower ID book, some labels and a pen. Reluctantly throwing a cautionary jumper into the bag, I headed off to the cliff-face coastline at Pettycur Bay, and began to fall in love with this formerly unnoticed face of nature.
Despite my work as a gardener for almost 25 years, the Fife Seed Library project has opened my eyes to the myriad imperceptible subtleties that exist within the intricate mechanism of nature, and getting up close with seed pods cusping on their dispersal stage revealed ingenious tactics and sneaky little tricks that I couldn’t help but adore.
Amidst tiny hooks and lethal barbs, spring-loaded pods (blown around in the breeze but resting on a hair-trigger for touch) exploded in my face, launching seeds up into my nose, hair and eyes. Fairy seeds blew in from high across the Forth, snagging on a slightly sticky stem as if the agreement to dock was made before the seed left home, many miles away. One pinch of a fluffy flowerhead released thousands of dust-like spore seeds into the swirling air, a chaotic dance of pure precision.
In no time at all, I had collected three large tubs of various seeds, which I labelled with the flower type, date of collection, location and the year. Lovely, lovely data. I enjoyed reminding myself of how the flowers look by using my book, and marvelled at the UNREAL transformative power of plants that can first create hyper-efficient solar panels which then power wacky colourful shapes and patterns, then just pack all that up and swap it for elaborate feathery vehicles capable of protecting, transporting and nourishing their offspring. Dynamic AF.
Something clicked in my monkey brain too. All that collection, connection, contemplation… I felt good. Really good. My hands became skilled at cracking the pods from dry branches, finding just the right wrist twist to avoid disturbing the plant. My eye got sharp for finding which seed heads were just right and ready. I was hyper-present, I was part of something. I was a good little hairy mammal doing my little hairy mammal bit in the symbiotic agreement with my environment. Filling the tubs was satisfying, even though it wasn’t anything I could eat, there was a palpable sense of hope. I saw a brief flash of a smiling face, not mine, gazing upon the seeds… someone else, somewhere else, far in the future, not yet met.
Give it a try, sweet people. I’m not going to say that it will solve all your problems because that’s something bigger, but collecting seeds that day really put me into a good headspace, both in the moment, in the season, and for days afterwards. Sometimes when it seems like being happy isn’t within reach, finding a neutral reset zone is a more realistic goal. Collecting seeds gave me a purpose to go out, a connection with the land, and a reward, as well as a good walk and some time to zone out.
I love you all… now get out there and collect seeds for me!
(And for you.)
(And for the future.)
Leave a Reply