January 2021

A third national lockdown was announced four days into the new year and just over a week later the number of people to have died from the virus reached over 100,000.  A wave of depression and sadness seemed to settle like a blanket of fog over the country and January has felt like a never ending roller-coaster of emotions, veering between hope for the imminent roll-out of vaccines and despair at the continual stream of bad news. I know I haven’t been alone in finding it hard to be positive about the future.

The newspapers have been full of advice on how to deal with such high levels of anxiety and fear. Gardening and being outside ‘in nature’ have come out as top coping therapies and daily walks along the old railway track around Sudbury’s water meadows have certainly helped.

Other advice has been to practice ‘mindfulness’ through concentrating on a  project or learning a new skill and although this page is intended to be about my garden, given that this was a particularly cold month and hardly conducive to gardening I spent much of it inside working at my computer. I’m painfully aware that this could well be a case of fiddling while Rome burns but I’ve been truly encouraged by the many kind comments I’ve received about my designs and as the new website gains interest I’ve felt freshly energised. Focusing on something that has required every available brain cell has certainly helped concentrate the mind.

Now though, with spring just around the corner, the garden will soon be shouting for attention. Lighter days and fresh new growth will stave off negative thought patterns and remind me that nothing stays the same, everything must change. This simpler form of therapy is more than welcome.