Taking time

On Monday we planted a hedge of trees in slanted wind and rain, watched with interest by three small donkeys, a small herd of pygmy goats and four llamas. Yesterday’s office was a polytunnel full of cherry tomato plants; we harvested the fruits and weighed them for the friend whose charges they are, the guinea pigs for his PhD. (Our freezer is now brimful of pulped tomatoes.) Today we planted trees along the banks of a turgid stream flowing from the head of a beautiful, remote valley in southern Snowdonia.

I love my varied life. It’s not easy to forget how lucky I am; if ever I’m complacent, or feel even slightly inclined to grumble about the weather, I just remind myself that I could be wrangling with the grants department of a quango or filling in performance indicators for a nature reserve (yes, that really happens). Total job satisfaction is instantly restored.

However, patience is not one of my virtues. ‘Why’s it taking so long?’ I am frequently heard to cry when terrain or weather makes jobs a bit more difficult. (Also shouted when occupied in any kind of housework.) On Monday, for example, my partner and I planted a hedge of 300 trees in under five hours. That included hauling trays of little trees to where they needed to be, plus the canes and guards that support and protect them, laying everything out – a seedling, a cane and a guard in each spot – and finally working along the hedge-line setting them into the soil. Today it took us six hours to plant 400, only 100 of which required canes and guards (sheep were excluded, and, being on the river bank, and subject to occasional inundation, the guards would probably be swept away in the next flood, possibly injuring or killing the young tree as well; better to plant the trees securely and let them take their chances).  My impatience was running high. ‘It’s so SLOW,’ I complained.

My partner is my polar opposite. ‘Things take time,’ he says to me, often. ‘Doing things well takes time.’ Today, he pointed out to me the things I should have noticed before I began to whinge: that we had to carry materials a lot further; that the river bank inside the fences was an organic, curving, changing creature, with heights and sinks and  narrows and broads, and that we had to spend more thought on placing the trees – willow near the edge, hawthorn and hazel on higher ground, birch and alder in amongst the rushes– rather than just laying them out in regular lines; that the trees’ job would be to stabilise the banks, so thought had to be given to where they were most needed. 

It’s probably obvious that I’m going to draw a parallel between this and writing. I’m terribly impatient with this as well. One sentence in and my mind is yelling at my fingers. ‘Rubbish! Scratch it out! Delete it! Do it right first time, why can’t you?’ Which is when it’s good to remember the trees, and to hear his voice in my head. ‘Things take time. Doing things well takes time.’

If you have your own mantras - yours or a supportive dear one's - I'd love to hear them.