The therapeutic value of sifting soil

A weird, anxious week ... thank god for the garden.

A bit of a ramble, odds and ends of reflection …

On the couch … laptop … Lola has moved closer to me now to place her paw on my arm and to stare at me (she wants to go to bed). She was at the groomers on Friday ($105) and today, with her bouffant-fur gone, I felt a lump on her back … vet visit required next week … neither of us will be happy about that. I’m hoping it’s a benign thing .. she’s had them before … but to check it out properly she’ll likely need to be sedated for a biopsy needle. She doesn’t tolerate needles.🤷‍♀️ More $.😫

Television humming on low in the background as I write, Countdown 50 Years On*, hosted by Tony Armstrong and Myf Warhurst; a Kate Bush tribute … Katy Steele singing Babooshka, Kate Miller-Heidke singing Wuthering Heights, Kate Ceberano doing Running Up That Hill; lots of grey hair in the studio audience, sedate swaying; a nod to Molly Meldrum slips in every so often in the form of a Stetson suspended at the side of the screen (I interviewed Molly for a profile piece in 2013; my understanding is that his health is poor). None of us are getting any younger, are we? Oh wow, Ganggajang on now, Sounds of Then, who are these grandfathers? And now Leo Sayer … oh dear. And … the briefest shot of Molly waving to camera at the end. He really doesn’t look good. None of us are getting any younger. (*Overseas readers: Countdown was an iconic Australian music show; Ian “Molly” Meldrum its host.)

Has been an unproductive, weird sort of week.

A lovely friend visiting from interstate invited me to lunch on Monday … he brought a copy of Fake for me to sign for him … extolled its virtues to the other guests at the table … told them how honest and raw my book was. A strange double-take for me … what I wrote seems at such a distance now; despite the new attention on it this year with the release of the TV series, the book is fuzzy to me. But, “honest” and “raw”? I’d almost forgotten how much I revealed of myself and my vulnerabilities in it. (Why on earth did I do that?) And at the table on Monday I was blindsided by the strangest sense of exposure, as though for the first time realising it. (Did I reveal myself too much?) …

Later, in what feels like a strange coincidence, I stumble on Anne Helen Petersen’s “Culture Study” Substack – an edition headed “Abusers in Plain Sight” in which she interviews the author of Mad Wife: A Memoir, a “stomach-punch of a memoir”. The book is about a professor’s escape from an abusive marriage. The professor tells Petersen: “… he routinely manipulated and pressured me into submitting to unwanted sex for many years in our marriage, under the guise of asking me to express my ‘love’, which for a long time I truly wanted to provide.” The interview is honest and raw, an exceptional interview; I expect the book is too. But to protect herself and her family, the author, the professor, goes by a pseudonym. She does not reveal herself in the true sense of the word. She says: “I hate having to publish this book under a pseudonym! It took a lot to write this mortifying story, let alone consider releasing it into the world. Once I was able to do those things, I really wanted to own it. A big part of what this book has done for me is give me a way to integrate my painful, confusing, embarrassing/shameful (whatever I’m calling it today) past into my current life, to make my history and sense of myself less fragmented.” Could I have written Fake under a pseudonym? Should I have? Have there been damaging consequences from revealing myself in the book that I cannot even see yet?

When I get home from lunch my sense of exposure is overtaken by anxiety … For the first time since I started freelancing in 2019 I have no immediate work … waiting to hear from a corporate client with revisions to my second white paper for them and a topic for the third (should you be interested in the subject matter, my first was titled “Unleashing the Potential of Neurodivergent Employees” – PDF here). Waiting on proofs to arrive for a Good Weekend feature which I think will be published in the next few weeks (on the subject of self-storage believe it or not). Waiting to hear from editors with responses to pitches I’ve sent. Wondering if I should pitch more ideas and follow up on a possible project with another corporate client but then what happens if the white paper work arrives next week and then I’m committed to more projects than I can manage … but, anxiety, money not coming in, how will I live? Freelancing – urgh!

Have I used this “downtime” productively? Have I worked on *the next book* idea? Have I tackled the endless admin piling up? Have I started to put together the survey I hope to send out to you before the year ends asking for your feedback on Vamp and for ideas for my first Zoom meet-up for paid subscribers? Did I get this week’s edition out on time on Friday? Have I done any of it? No of course I haven’t. I’ve doom-scrolled, dithered and done minor chores. (Oh also, perhaps not such a waste of time, I’ve spent silly amounts of time starting to build a list of people to follow on Bluesky, which is being called the new Twitter/X and, in the days since the US election, has become quite the phenomenon. More on Bluesky below.)

And so I found myself this morning, anxious still, unsettled, still dithering, behind on dispatching Vamp to you … and what do I do? Instead of putting my head down, getting it done, I went into my garden. …

Last weekend, I started to dig a hole for a large palm which has become root-bound in its pot and needs a new home. I hit obstacles: when this apartment complex was built in the late 1980s, the garden beds were filled with more building rubble than soil. Digging even the smallest hole is an exercise in brute force and persistence. Last weekend, I slammed my crowbar into the ground again and again to no avail. Concrete? Bricks? Asphalt? Something. I got no more than a third of a foot down. Yesterday, a lovely neighbour arrived with his sledgehammer and more brute force than I can muster. He excavated a hole for me big enough to bury a body in. The pile of soil to the side was towering, rubbly, rocky.

Today, for an hour or more, I sat next to the hole with my soil sifter, methodically shaking and separating soil from stone, returning sifted soil to hole, adding deliciously wormy compost from my compost bin, slow and steady soil-improvement. I didn’t think much about anything. I didn’t worry. My shoulders relaxed. The motion of shaking the sifter, feeling the work in my biceps and triceps and forearms, the sound of the stones rattling back and forth, the powdery soil falling away … it was meditative, therapy and, when I came inside for a shower, I felt the best, the calmest I have all week.

Lola is having a dream now next to me; she’s twitching, issuing little growls … she might have seen a greyhound in her sleep. (She really hates greyhounds). I’m thinking now that after I’ve taken her for her morning walk tomorrow, Sunday, I’ll get back out there into the garden. There’s a whole lot more soil to be sifted.

I’m putting the rest of this edition of Vamp behind the pay wall … I’ve assembled a bumper collection of stuff for you including important stories for women, some great podcast and documentary recommendations, a chicken coop to end all chicken coops (you just have to see this chicken coop!), Christmas gift ideas and a look at Bluesky, which might yet change the world.