A Life Re-potted.

As the sun finally made an appearance this week, I headed out secateurs in hand into our urban jungle garden. After the wettest May in history, plant and weeds alike – I honestly can’t tell the difference - have run amok. Although proudly, my West-facing crooked little lawn has finally turned green - more moss than lawn but green, nonetheless.

It’s become a celebrated annual event in our house to haul out my climate-inappropriate Mediterranean trees that I have vainly collected over the years - from lemon to olive as well as the piece de resistance, The Pomegranate, that my husband gifted me for our first wedding anniversary.

Every year by November darkness, I think it’s finally given up the ghost, murdered mercilessly by our always-on unnecessarily high central heating. But every year without fail it bursts into bloom in Spring as if in defiance that I ever doubted her.

So here they all gather, out on our little suburban terrace after wintering in every available crevasse of our house, too tender to survive an English winter (or Spring!).

While the baby takes his warmly welcomed afternoon nap (“Mummy time”, I like to call it), I set to repotting my rather depressed looking lavender tree ready for its annual garden debut. Revelling in the unique feeling of time and space gardening gives me, I was reminded of the book Repotting Your Life by Frances Edmonds.

The book seeks to show those of us unhappily stuck in a rut or feeling a bit stale or pot bound how to rejuvenate our lives, find new challenges and new adventures whatever our age or circumstances.

As I shake and prise the old pot away from the dry, woody tree, unpicked gnarly roots and dried bark all packed into a terracotta pot long outgrown, I got to thinking, maybe I need repotting?

Successive Covid lockdowns and the resulting feelings of isolation and powerlessness I have felt over the last year and a half have left me thinking ‘Maybe it’s time to size up?’ or maybe it’s just time to settle into a new roomier pot.

Just like my wilting lavender tree my roots feel all gnarled up together and packed into a space – emotional and physical – where there’s just no more room to grow in any sense of the word.

Luckily Edmonds doesn’t leave us hopeless. Repotting yourself, she says is as easy as repotting your azalais and just as fool proof.

And so here I go. Emboldened by our late Spring warmth and the easing of lockdown restrictions, I have resigned from my secure and reasonable well-paid job - which has for a long time now made me feel like a round peg in square hole.

Relaunched my blog Muselet after a five-year hiatus.

Together with a not very thoughtfully crafted plan of action for paying the mortgage, trowel in hand, a yearning for space, freedom and reconnection and a head full of dreams, I begin my next exciting life adventure – exclusively told here on my blog, Muselet.

Wish me luck!

Full credits: ‘Repotting Your Life’ By Frances Edmonds (Elliott & Thompson, £14.99)

Muselet Definition: “The wire cage that keeps a champagne cork from popping off the bottle.” Origin: From the French “Museler” to “muzzle”.