7.6.24 – on photographing the garden and knowing the scythe

in the garden

When we lived in the old flat, I spent a lot of time in the front window looking at my garden. This was how I did the bulk of my observation; when I was in the garden itself, I did not feel free to stand and look. It was a small tenement garden the size of a parking space, practically on the pavement, and I wanted to always look busy in it because being busy meant it was harder for people to stop and talk. The hyper-social element of a very public-facing front garden was both a joy (so many friends made just by being outside) and a hindrance (so many man-splainers and conspiracy theorists, so much introversion in myself).

The time I spent in the garden felt too overwhelming to process in the moment. It was fast, and urgent, and I didn’t notice a lot of things because of all the looking-busy. Sometimes I set my alarm for very early so I could be outside at 6 or 6:30, before people were out, and I would perch on my bench and drink coffee and revel in being able to sit with the plants as I observed them. But there was always an element of tension and risk, even at 6am: sometimes my elderly neighbour (who hated me, often shouted at me) would be walking to and from every corner shop in the neighbourhood, buzzing in a manic episode, and she would avoid me coldly if I had recently set a boundary with her, or try to regale me with her perceived woes if I hadn’t.

Most days, when I was finished with all the tasks I could see, I took photographs of the garden with my DSLR camera, came inside to write down everything I had planted and sowed and pruned, and then looked at my pictures. Only then did I really see the garden. Only then did I have the time, observing my photographs, to notice things deeply and have a long think about what needed doing next. It was by no means an unpleasurable task, but I did wish for a day when I wouldn’t rely so heavily on the camera to see the garden for me, when I would have privacy to sit and stare instead looking at the photos, and stealing looks out the window, and snatching bits of dawn.

Now, in a house of my own with a fenced back garden, I have all day. I can stand at my kitchen door and look for as long as I want. Just look and look and look. Be greedy with looking. I can go outside and smell the air and spend a long time gazing at my baby squashes in the cold frame. There is sometimes a risk of being engaged in conversation by a neighbour (all of whom I like! what a novelty), who might call out a hello when they see me through the slats of the fence. There are still windows that overlook us from the tenements. I still go outside negotiating the likelihood of being watched. But when we moved in, the most outrageous luxury the garden seemed to afford – apart from the size of it, apart from the wild concept of having so much time with it – was the opportunity to look deeply in the moment, the possibility of seeing everything in the present tense.

What I have learned in these last two years of looking is that my inability to see in the moment was not solely a result of distracted social anxiety. Whether in a loud public-facing front garden or a less loud but far more private back garden, my autistic brain doesn’t take in every visual with crisp immediacy because there is so much other sensation to parse: the rush of traffic behind the fence, light glinting brightly off leaves and puddles, good food smells from the pub, a small dog investigating somewhere he shouldn’t be, eating something he shouldn’t eat. Even with all this time and luxury of looking, taking photographs has remained a vital part of my ability to see the garden outside of my sensory experience of it. Very literally, the camera allows me to focus on segments and details more intentionally, both in the moment of capture and in the viewing and editing later. It is as much a tool of growing as the trowel or the watering can; the photographs it produces are as much a harvest as the herbs and the berries.

I thought I was taking a photo of just the one slug, but oh, there’s more.

The Gard’ner’s Kalendar – June

The first newsletter of every month this year will include an excerpt from gardener John Reid’s 1683 book The Gardn’ner’s Kalendar, an addendum to his book The Scots Gard’ner.

            Cleanse about the roots of trees, suckers, and weeds; water their covered bulks, especially the new planted.

            Fell the long small ill-train’d forrest-trees in the nurserie, within half a foot of the ground. Unbind graffs. Prune all wall and standard trees. Towards the end you may inoculate and also increase by circumposition.

            Gather elm seed and sow immediately. Transplant coleflowers, coleworts, beets, leeks, purslain, &c., in moist weather; at least water first the ground if dry.

            Sow peas, radish, turneep, lettice, chervil, cresses, &c.

            Destroy snails, worms, &c.

            Begin to lay carnations or July-flowers; shade, support and prune such as will blow. Water the pots and thirsty-plants. Weeding and mowing is in season, and so is distillation.

            Bees now swarm, look diligently to them.

Garden Dishes and Drinks in Season

Cole, beets, parsley, sorrall, and other pot-herbes. Purslain, lettice, and other sallads. Radish, scorzonera, asparagus, green peas and artichocks. Green gooseberries. Ripe cherries, rasps, currans, strawberries.

            Housed aples and pears.

            Cyder, metheglin, &c.

John Reid’s list of June tasks is so familiar and so very close to my own that, in reading it through the first few times, I forgot what these tasks might have looked like for him in the 17^th century, how they would be carried out differently without plastic pots, and plastic water butt, and perhaps my modern reluctance to kill snails on the grounds of cuteness. It’s only when I ask myself what “mowing” meant in the 17^th century that I realise my modern perception of the word is filled with the stench of diesel, the roar of engines, the danger of spinning blades. A loud word used too liberally on monocultural lawns surrounding my neighbours’ houses, the factored grounds of flats, and nearby cemetery and parkland, which generates unbearable noise pollution and often decimates wildlife and their habitats. But for John Reid and other land workers of the time, mowing would have been a quieter word, full of the steady motion of a sharp crescent of metal.

A scythe is a tool designed for cutting vegetation at ground level, principally grass and grains. According to The Scythe Association, “The scythe is therefore found in most areas of the world where grass and grains such as wheat, barley, oats, or rye are the predominate agricultural crop.” Our old pal Alexander Fenton tells us in Scottish Country Life, “The iron-bladed scythe with a straight handle or sned has been known in Scotland at least from Roman times, but until the late eighteenth century its primary function was to mow grass and hay.” For Reid then, the act of mowing was purely horticultural, a practice to maintain walkways between beds, grass in the orchards, and the lawns of one’s deer park.

I know I’m not the only one who grew up assuming that scything was an old-timey practice, consigned gladly to history for all the backbreaking labour it required of our pre-modern forebears. Until a few years ago, I probably only saw scythes in paintings or representations of the Grim Reaper. But since I entered this world of regenerative growing and land conservation, I’ve been introduced to the modern uses of scything through friends and fellow land workers, who use it for everything from cutting home lawns, to mowing wider grassland, to managing riverbanks and reedbeds. In stark contrast to the belief that scything is hard labour, I’ve learned it provides a surprisingly lightweight alternative to power mowing, which has benefits for the mower (quiet, no fumes to breathe in, meditative) and the mowed (quiet, no fumes to breathe in, no vortex of spinning blades to suck up insects and small mammals).

If you would like to learn more, Welsh gardener Huw Richards recently did a video essay about his use of scything and the importance and untapped potential of grass-based food systems in the UK.

Additionally, there is the Scythe Association of Britain and Ireland, whose website has many resources for buying and utilising scythes. Their next Scottish Scything Festival will happen in 2025.