Life, with the garden
Location: Bagarmossen, Sweden • • • Visit: March and April 2021
March 12
A while back, I read ”H is for Hawk” by Helen Macdonald. It is a memoir of her grief following the unexpected death of her father. How she started training a goshawk and it almost made her lose herself, into the bird, the grief – but then, also, guided her out of it. It is an interesting book, painful, well worth the read.
And she isn’t oblivious to the strangeness in training a wild bird of prey. That this centuries old practice is problematic. But also, she writes: When do we meet wild animals on their own terms? In the lives most of us live today. Really get to know them? We see nature documentaries where the animals are curated, there to play a part in our idea about the wilderness. Rarely do they get to define how we see them. She writes: A hawk cannot be tamed, it will accept to be fed and come back for that comfort, or fly away. It will not be curated.
I meet roe deer almost daily on my runs in the nature reserve. They are not shy, can stand meters from me, staring. The hares cross the path in a panic. Last summer I saw a badger, just a couple hundred meters from my house. A squirrel frequents the pine tree by my balcony. Foxes hang out by the allotment gardens. So many birds outside my kitchen window.
I do meet wild animals. But only those that have adapted to living next to humans. And only for brief moments. I have known domesticated animals, though. Dogs and cats, obviously – but also animals of prey, which creates a completely different dynamic in the relationship. Horses, of course, but also chickens, sheep, goats, donkeys. It might sound strange, but many things I’ve realized about being human, I’ve learned from observing and interacting with other species.
It is interesting. How insight can lie in the contrast. I think Helen Macdonald felt the same about the goshawk.
March 25
I’m reading a book about sheep. “A Short History of the World According to Sheep” by Sally Coulthard. I love how it meanders through the centuries, touching upon everything from the incredible properties of wool to how we started making cheese. Did you know that we have the domestication of sheep to thank for the invention of the scissors? Ancient shepherds needed something better than knives to shear the sheep with.
A thing I find particularly enjoyable with the book, is that it has nothing to do with my thesis.
Except, maybe, that there should be more sheep grazing in the forest pastures in southern Sweden, to increase multifunctionality, generate ecosystem services, and promote biodiversity.
Shit. I can never get away.
March 31
I love what the spring rain does to the colors outside my windows. It is raining in Stockholm today and I was sitting in a meeting, listening to a colleague complain about the weather, and I thought: I can’t understand this. Yes, with the non-stop clouds and rain in November, but now? The moisture gives the greens and the browns so much depth, the needles of the pine and the buds on the ash tree almost ready to burst. Little white willow catkins catching the light. On my evening run, birds singing and a faint earth smell, families of hepatica bright purple and blue among the decaying leaves. The air feeling clean, after a day of light rain.
No. I like this. And it’s only going to get better. With warmth, comes the after-rainfall-smells, too.
April 20
My friend Josh messaged me: “Let’s just both remember that it’s only a phd and no one will die if it sucks.”
My mantra for the coming five months. I booked the date of my defense today.
April 22
Today was a crap day for thesis. Today, it snowed – which was quite beautiful to watch through the window, if I’m being honest. But it felt wrong, anyway.
But I’m very much enjoying how the returning light has lured my house plants into bloom, pinks and purples. Even a little white.
August 10
It has been hard, trying to finish my PhD thesis while living through a pandemic. The things I would normally do to balance my mind, like making music with friends, collective complaining – you know, the socializing, basically – have not been possible. I have had to channel my frustration, confusion, doubt and despair into other things.
I got into running. Incredible, to see the seasons move through trees and shrubs in the nearby forest on an almost daily basis.
Way too much TV show binging. Mostly re-watching old favorites, the smart sit-coms that make it seem like the world will be OK.
Mostly, though, knitting (which, to be fair, I do while watching those shows). So much knitting. An entire wardrobe’s worth of sublimated anxiety.
Wrapping up the thesis isn’t going as well as I wish. My defense was postponed (a little, but still). I thought: What have I really achieved during this past year-and-a half? Much too little.
But wallowing in those feelings of inadequacy is no way to finish a thesis. What about all that yarn that I’ve turned into: three jumpers, three pullovers, one cardigan, two dresses, a poncho, baby stuff for Alvar, a summer hat, slippers, a pair of mittens, three cross-stitch embroideries and a crazy number of crocheted flowers and butterflies? That’s got to count for something.
… I just wish they could be included as appendices to my PhD thesis, to draw the committee’s attention away from some of the weaker arguments in the text …
Undated, summer
One thing I miss is traveling, finding random places to read. There is a restlessness that I find hard to shake, when trying to read at home. I do it so much better elsewhere. It doesn’t even have to be far away. If I had a slow Sunday afternoon and a good book that I wanted to get enveloped by, I could get on the metro and just travel to the end of the line, reading while people got on and off, occasionally look out the window when the rails were above ground.
And further away, of course. On a train, between steep mountains. At a crêperie on a quiet back street of a French city, with a glass of hard cider. With my toes digging into the sand while a dog is chasing waves further down the beach. A sunny bench in a botanic garden.
And I miss reading next to someone else. Moving in parallell with another body, the slow passage of time and someone just being there. No talking, just the occasional rustle from turning pages.
I remember reading sci-fi next to Natalia on sunny benches in Glasgow Botanic Garden. I’m probably romanticizing.
But we have been doing other things in parallell. Watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, connected through Skype. We started watching the first season in the beginning of 2020, when Covid-19 still was just an obscure news item from faraway China. A week ago, we watched the series finale, while drinking strawberry margaritas. I’m going to miss seeing Buffy save the world.
September 28
There.
On Friday, I approved my PhD thesis for final print.
I spent the weekend feeling relieved, confused, remembering small, insignificant details that I forgot to include. Empty.
But it’s done now. In a month, I’ll defend it. And then: The next stage of life begins (whatever that will entail).
While I wait: I will finish the green cable knit dress (and various other projects I haven’t had the presence of mind to complete). I’m making sun- (oven-) dried tomatoes from the generous harvest from my balcony garden. I’ll be going outside to enjoy the autumn (maybe even to photograph some of those almost-finished-projects together with Natalia).
And admire the baby sunflower that sprouted from one of my tomato pots. I must have mixed the soil in that pot with some leftovers from last year, soil that stood under the bird-feeder I had on the balcony last winter. A strange plant started growing in the pot next to the tomato, and I thought: Why not see what comes up? A beautiful, autumn sunflower, that’s what.
And so, you never know what will turn up. Sometimes, unexpected and unplanned things might positively surprise you. Sometimes, it’s worth to just wait and see what that unexpected thing turns into.
That’s my feeling today. This partially cloudy but brilliantly colorful late September Tuesday.
Katja Malmborg 