Becoming A Gardening Goddess
Gardening, Cottage Core, Archetypical Women and the Reality of it PLUS: MONTHLY MUSINGS IN APRIL / The Muse Letter No. 95
A long silk gown floating through air as winged doors are opened, a woman’s back her hands holding the doors wide, as if spreading herself into the surroundings, the sun shining through tall trees glistening, dancing lights all over the walls. She is glowing, she is growing, like the garden she is awakening to the call of Spring.
Everything is in soft light, her words are whispers, little secretes she spills, wisdom she shares, jokes she enjoys. She knows her seeds will fall on fertile earth, she trusts the process, listens to her intuition. Her touch heals and nourishes, she knows what needs tending to and what can grow on its own.
That’s the gardening goddess.
She visits me every late March when the light is back and the first layer of winter clothes is slowly moving to the back of the coat pile. When I see tulips and bluebells and narcissus sprouting and gloriously enfolding their colourful dresses in other people’s gardens and when I realise that I have not planted anything in Autumn so that ship has sailed and that I if I don’t really fucking start now nothing will be happening (again).
Excuse me of my manners. I say to the gardening goddess. Shuffling through last year’s left-over seeds that never made it into the soil. “Gardens are not made by singing ‘Oh, how beautiful,’ and sitting in the shade.”1 – Oh but I wish.
My history of gardening is a history of failure. Or at least that’s how I perceive it which might be wrong, which might be a bit dramatic but it describes accurately the feeling that I have every Spring when I yet again have to start over from scratch.
This inevitably has to do with the fact that I’m always moving and never really putting down any roots so there’s that: no wonder nothing is flourishing in my garden that this year, this new year, this new garden is full of little pebbles, little stones that someone who lived here before dumped in an attempt to make things easy which in reality makes everything very hard.
I want to be like Jessica Fletcher hunching over some pansies with a straw sun hat and a funky jumper on and smile at my neighbours when they pass by. I want to be an old lady already and get all worked up in pruning my rosebushes to the right size. And have that be the main plot of my life. I want to say “What’s with the rhododendron?” and hold a leaf in my hand and click my tongue while I say it.
Yes, I want escapism, thank you. After three years of this pandemic shit show, I am really in need of a garden to pretend to be a wealthy ol’ grandma for five minutes. Alas, this stone garden, this graveyard really in front of our flat is hindering it all. My little dream of tranquillity, my cottage core fantasy.
Cottage core in case you missed the 2020 pandemic hit is “an aesthetic that has been growing in popularity primarily on the app TikTok; it emphasizes a more pastoral style of living, involving gardening, animals, and mild paganism. In terms of its aesthetic, Cottagecore entails the donning of flowy dresses, long skirts, bandanas, headbands, and a style of dress that hearkens back to the 1800s. Many of the Cottagecore tagged videos on TikTok involve girls in long, pretty dresses going foraging in the woods, making jewelry, or showcasing their rock and crystal collections. This trend has mainly become popular amongst women and the LGBTQIA2+ community; however, the Cottagecore community is accepting of everyone.”2
Now I’m not planning a TikTok career or am interested in following the quest to be “that girl”. I am over that era of my life. But a little part of me I guess loves to have a good female archetype. Something to aspire to. An image if you will. Something that motivates me from my bed into the garden to dig up the foliage underneath the stone bed and lift it up and let them all pour onto one side so that at least half of the garden can be used as a ground for flowers and meadow.
So that I can sit there and marvel at the butterflies; in the background, there’s a faint harp playing and we eat tea with biscuits and read The Secret Garden and I look up and recite a passage to my favourite person in the world while they idly smile:
“Sometimes since I've been in the garden I've looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something was pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes, and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden - in all the places.”3
As a thank you to all the lovely people who are supporting The Muse Letter financially and securing its future; I am starting a new monthly series for you, where I will share the things I look forward to that month, creative tips, inspiration, crown the Muse :: of the Month, and answer your questions:
MUSINGS IN APRIL
crowning the muse of the month, things that I look forward to, creative tips, inspiration, and questions answered