Things to do this week in your garden- January Week 1
Mindful Gardening and Floristry activities to calm your mind and soothe your soul
I didn’t manage a single one.
Every time an email popped into my inbox with the familiar subject line I felt my heart sink.
I was confused. Hadn’t I signed up to
’s Winter Writing Sanctuary to lift my mood over winter? But instead I was almost dreading seeing those emails ping up on my phone.The idea with the sanctuary is that you carve out time for you in the Twixtmas period to write a little every day, using the daily prompts Beth gives you.
But I managed to watch the intro and then life got in the way.
After many years of self shaming I found myself finally able to reframe my thoughts, ‘Winter is not over’ ‘You have plenty of time’ (in fact the course is open until July but there’s still at least 10 weeks of actual winter left in which to do it.) ‘It’s ok to start over on your own timeline.’
I have a real fear of getting left behind, and in the past have just written things off if I can’t do them live.
There’s an element of thriving with accountability but also I think it’s a bit of a hangover from panicking about being left behind at school. That good girl conditioning still rears its ugly head every now and again, despite the vast amounts of work I’ve done to rebel against it.
So, I’m going to try and a do a Winter writing sanctuary exercise a week for the next 8 weeks, because for me 2024 is the year I want to grow my writing skills and this will be a wonderful kickstart to that. Especially once the kids are back at school and I have time to think.
Perhaps you’ve felt the same way about your garden, telling yourself ‘oh well i’ve missed my chance now, summer’s in full swing’, so you just sack it off again and then feel pissed off and a little jealous when you see Sandra’s blooming beautiful garden over the fence.
A garden is never one and done, in fact when you’re busy with limited time like we are, little and often all year round is the way to go. Which is why my paid Substack subscribers get mindful gardening prompts every week of the year to make sure their garden is looking even more bountiful than Sandra’s come Summer. And they’re feeling on top of the world because they’ve given themselves those little pockets of time to create it each week.
BUT sometimes for them (and me too) life gets in the way. My weekly prompt emails are landing in their inbox and they just cannot even find 5 minutes to do one of them.
Thats why the community support element of my Substack is there. So they can come in to the comments or chat and say ‘Help, the garden is looking wild and I don’t even know where to start’ and I can help them get back on track in a way that will have the most impact.
If this sounds like something you need this year, then i’d love to invite you to join me as a paid subscriber for less than £1 a week.
If you’re already signed up then scroll down and dive right into this weeks delicious activities.