On Abundance

Like the sea air to a Victorian invalid, the abundance of late summer is just what an unravelled mind needs: generous, convivial, creative, and absolutely infuriating.

My veg trug is full today.

There are fistfuls of beans; bunches of carrot and beetroots; tomatoes; a garish bouquet of rainbow chard; and more courgettes than my basket can lift. There is fruit too – figs, apples, a few plums, the very last of the late, pink gooseberries and the very first of the apples – it’s all cropping in glorious abundance.

The generosity of nature in late summer astounds me.

No matter how many years I grow food (this is my eleventh, give or take), the sheer quantity and variety of the late summer harvest leaves me marvelling at the miracle of it all. All this, in the case of the vegetables at least, was no more than glint a seed packet’s eye eight months ago. And now it’s enough to feed the whole village green. Magic.

This is nature showing off. But it’s also a nifty trick she uses to offer solace, and possibly something more challenging, to those of us whose minds tend towards dark places (catch up on my Dark Places here).

Like the sea air to a Victorian invalid, the abundance of the August allotment is just what an unravelled mind needs, and I find it one of nature’s most potent cures to melancholy. The late summer glut is generous, convivial, creative, and absolutely infuriating.

Yes, maddening. Let me explain.

In dark times when you think the world is falling down around your ears and you fear there might not be another sunrise, seeing things grow, watching nature make a feast from seemingly nothing, is a powerful antidote. Because it is the opposite of depression. Depression, which is miserly, selfish, tight-fisted and diminishing, is no match for such generosity, such easy-going plenty. August’s abundance is a fire blanket of uncomplicated joy smothering all else.

And this abundance forces you to be sociable too.

You’ve no hope of eating all this by yourself so you must give it away or have people over to help eat it. And that means seeing people. It’s that or wasting it all, which would be sacrilegious, even to the glummest grower. Nature is coaxing you out of your stuffy bedroom with her bounty, cajoling you to connect, which is just what you need.

She’s luring you into creativity too.

Necessity is the mother of invention, they say. I say, a glut is the mother of a new recipe. Faced with all the kohl rabi you have previously eaten in a lifetime cropping in a single week, you must find new ways to use it. And there’s only so much apple and kohl rabi remoulade one household can eat. Ok, you say. Fine, Nature. I’ll roast it and serve it with pesto. (Delicious.) Might it work in a gratin? (Yes.) And a slaw? (Fine, but a bit close to remoulade.) What about schnitzelled? (It’s a thing.)

Unless you are prepared to commit that cardinal sin of wasting a crop, and I’m not (avoiding food waste is hardwired into most growers, some – me –  to the point that it can become oppressive), then the gluts of late summer galvanise you to get inventive. And in this act of creativity there is agency, hope, potential and the satisfaction of making something beautiful and delicious.

It would be neatest to leave it there.

To tell you this huge harvest was nothing but a pleasure and a balm. Though, even if you did believe me, you’d roll your eyes at the rose-tinted filter. #Blessed.

But wait, because there is a But coming…

But. All this abundance can be as annoying as hell.

At my lowest, the gravitational pull of the duvet is strong. What I really want to do is draw the curtains and hide in bed until the feeling goes (it always does, eventually, I’ve learnt that now; you just have to sit it out). In this state, nothing, believe me, nothing is more maddening than the voice of reason. And not just reason, but hope, action, optimism. Ugh. It makes me wince to see all this life, all this sunshine, in contrast to the comatose cloud of my mood. It’s all so bloody cheery.

Of course, this is exactly what I need. Not in a ‘a bit of fresh air will make you feel better’ way. No, it’s more assertive than that. Nature is not just here to sooth, she means to challenge me. To incite me to move. To create. To share. To see life at close quarters. And though it riles me because it contradicts my feelings that the world is dreadful and all is lost, it works. However reluctantly I am drawn into the garden, it makes me act, shows me the progress and forward motion of life, the seasons, nature’s course. Oh look, the sun still rises. Nature is the only thing brave enough to challenge me, smiling all the while, knowing I won’t be able to say no to her bounty. She is the one force stronger than the draw of the duvet, and she knows it.

So even if I sometimes glower at the abundance of the season because I think I’d rather sit and look at the bedroom floor than deal with the courgette glut, somehow that hopefulness, that promise, that sheer wonder of a seed transforming into a glut, gets me out of bed and into the garden.