188. Living in the countryside is a full time job and a lot of work, nothing comes easy like on Pinterest.
Everyone says that living in the countryside is a dream, but no one tells you how much hard work it is.
Spring has arrived, which means that the garden has woken up. The tulips have started to appear, bringing different colours into a landscape that’s been brown and grey all winter. Daffodils have popped up between bushes and under trees, reminding us that sunlight will soon be here to stay. These two flowers serve as a reminder that it’s time to get to work.
Before living in the countryside, I thought that people’s lives and gardens looked like the photos I’d see on Pinterest. Beautifully organised flower beds, perfectly cut grass which always looked short and comfortable to walk on, vegetable patches full of vibrant colours and perfectly placed sticks to guide the plants towards the sky, tulips that had been planted using a ruler, chickens wandering around the garden looking oh so cute, and I believed that my life in the countryside would be the same.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen my Nannie and my Nonno’s gardens, so I know that this type of beauty is possible. Nono, sweeps his lawn with a brush and cuts it to a specific height, while Nannie had the most beautiful flower baskets and the most delicious peas. These photos we’ve all seen on Pinterest are definitely some people’s realities, as they were my grandparents’, and they are a dream to look at, but have you ever stopped to think about how many hours of work a day, a week, or a month these gardens require?
I have been living in the countryside for around three years now and I can’t see myself moving back to a city or living in a place that’s far away from raw nature—yet every year, I forget how much work my garden needs.
The place we live now is in the middle of the countryside (quite literally) which means that we don’t even live in a small village. We’re surrounded by fields of grazing cows, wheat fields, and maizes. The type of crops changes regularly, but you get the picture. We live in a house, on a big piece of land in the middle of nowhere where there is no lovely short soft grass, no flowerbeds without weeds, no trees without ivy, no water without frogs, no roof without nests, no vegetable patch without moles, no barn without bats, no workshop without mice, and no fantasy without reality.
The arrival of spring means that our grass—if we can call our potpourri of different green plants “grass”— begins to grow five centimetres a day, the weeds that have stronger roots than any vegetable plant you’ll ever plant begin to grab onto the soil like Hulk, the trees we pruned in winter and left in a pile need to be chopped up to become dry firewood, potatoes need to be bought and planted, garlic needs to go into the ground following the moon cycle, seeds need to be germinated and planted, the soil needs to be dug, turned over and fertilized, overgrown flower beds need trimming, the fireplace needs cleaning and bees need to be cherished and enjoyed.
This essay came to me while I was pulling on my green wellies, looking for the can of petrol in the spider’s lair—I mean workshop— and trudging the lawn mower out into the garden. I had one hour between meetings and the grass needed to be cut. It was now or never. As I pressed the soft jelly-like button to pump petrol into the well rested engine, I thought “living here is no easy job, but they don’t tell you that on Pinterest", so I thought I’d tell you myself.
I’m still surprised when my friends imagine me picking blackberries in a field without getting little cuts all over my hands, fingers and wrists. Swearing every two to three minutes because the tiny thorns are always worse than the big thorns until one really gets you and you start bleeding.
From this type of photo, it appears to be and feels so idylic, and it is! Picking blackberries in a field surrounded by an abundance of nature’s free food is magical. It’s mesmerizing to only focus on finding big black berries and picking one after another, seeing how your Tupperware (because in reality who uses a beautiful basket?) fills up while you eat some of the good ones every here and there. But it’s also painful, hot and uncomfortable.
Another thing my friends talk about is having picnics in the garden and eating fruit and vegetables from the garden. It’s so dreamy to lay down the red gingham picnic blanket that C made and eat freshly picked berries and homemade pickles. It’s divine and it’s cute, but it’s also itchy and annoying that you have to share your food and blanket with ants, wasps, bees, flies, mosquitoes, other insects that look like ants but aren’t ants, while different types of dusty pollen gets stuck in your hair from all the trees above.
I’m not here to burst anyone’s bubble or to try to convince people to stay in cities because nothing would make me happier than seeing other people my age live in the countryside. I long for a physical community and to be able to swap lettuce for peppers and tomatoes for watermelons, but nobody is selling the reality of living in nature.
Taking care of the house and keeping up with the garden is a full time job, on top of the other full time job I already have to earn money. Once you’ve cut the grass-lawn-jungle down to a considerable size, the compost heap needs turning and when you’ve done that, your fruit trees needs fertilizing. When that’s done, you need to go and water the flowers and everything else you decided to plant before it all dies. If you are lucky and your beautiful flower seedlings begin to appear, you’ll start to notice how they’re being eaten and need protecting, which means getting out the net and faffing around with that until it’s bird-proof (which it never will be) and when that’s all sorted your potato plants will need checking for the famous red-and-black beetles and you’ll have to check each leaf by hand. When you’re sure that your potatoes are safe, don’t worry because you’ll have to go and check again tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after. While you’re checking on your potatoes for the little bastar—beatles, you’ll see that there are slugs eating other plants’ leaves. So now you need to go and read up on how to get rid of slugs without being evil until you find out that you can’t!
Living in the countryside means always being two days behind. You’re always running late and you’re never doing enough. The weeds will always need weeding, the plants will always need watering and staking. The firewood will always need to be checked on so that your perfect Jenga pile doesn’t fall over thanks to next door’s cat using it as a climbing frame. The dahlia will always need extra love so that it doesn’t freeze or die, and it most probably will die anyway. The lilies will grow beautifully until something happens and they’ve suddenly been invaded by spiders and stop growing.
But if you love it as much as I do, you will always have a safe space to disappear to, you’ll always feel surrounded by abundance, you’ll learn something new every day, you’ll find new techniques that actually work, you’ll grow the tastiest vegetables you’ve ever eaten, you’ll end up singing and talking to plants because you appreciate them so much and you think they can hear you. You’ll recognize every bird that you see in the garden and give it a name, you’ll have flowers to give your neighbours and admire on the kitchen table. You’ll know how to take care of chickens and love them even though you’re still a bit scared of them and get to eat their delicious eggs every morning. You’ll even become friends with the mice and wonder where they’ve gone when you stop hearing them scatter around at night.
If you know what you’re getting yourself into and you are open to learning and working hard, you’ll find a way of living that soothes your soul and makes you feel complete, but you won’t find what you’re looking for on Pinterest.
Un vlog que me encanta y estoy saboreando poco a poco de
A project I love and think you will too if you love letters.
Living in the countryside has very little in common with living in a city.
My Nike P6000s became real running shoes the moment I left my city life behind, and my Clarks Wallabees quickly became useless to walk around in if I didn’t want them to get covered in mud. When I first moved to the countryside, I thought I’d live more or less the same way I did in Barcelona, but it quickly became apparent that it was a case of either adapt or struggle.