9th December

I thought I’d look back and see what I was writing last Christmas, the Christmas before, and along the way I found this picture. Could almost smell these blossoms. There seem to be some things so good that they can cut through anything, like Robin, and the scent of sweetpeas. Maybe that thing is hope. The unbelievable beauty that can cut through anything. The unbelievable courage of pouring beauty into the world without discrimination.

I planted the sweetpeas because my nana had died and she loved sweetpeas. I planted the sweetpeas because very little was good but I knew sweetpeas were. I am baulking at the idea of writing about hope is like a seed. But I did plant them.

I left half with my mum, where I’d been staying when I planted them. I carried half North, to where I was staying after that. I left some with a friend, in a garden where hope was hard. I gave one to someone who might because a friend, a tentative offer in the first few days of a new job. They grew up her garden wall, finding their way to West Yorkshire light. I carried some in buckets and awkward pots to a pub carpark, where welcome was the good and hard work of every day, and Robin and I were welcomed like the welcoming scent of sweetpeas, even if often it smelled like old beer.

The sweetpeas carried no answers or meaning, often even no comfort, so small in a bitter winter world. But they grew. And they were so assuredly beautiful. And they sang their scent all day and all night.

I pressed flowers like my nana did, and carried the dried petals to scatter with her ashes on a Northumbrian beach. I kept some away and every so often find them and remember that I planted them, and pressed them, and bore the hope of them to many places, and sometimes caught a scent of the hope they bear.

This year, all year, I’ve had a packet of seeds growing increasingly crumpled in a slightly purposeless small shelf in the dashboard of my sometime-van. A time is coming when instead of all the not-having-planted-them, it could be nearly time to plant them again.

[Image description: intricate and huge purple and pink petals, almost filling the picture. In the background rows of sticks and stalks and tiny curling tendrils.]