You can’t control the weather – and that’s ok

We have had some spectacular weather.  I even got sunburned last week thanks to my Celtic complexion and a last minute change of plans.  Always wear sunscreen people!  So you’d think that with it being glorious, and with May fast approaching, that we’d seen the last of that pesky frost right?  Wrong!

There was to be no nelipotting around the garden for me this morning.  Instead, pots of water were full of thick ice, and frost tipped plants were a plenty. Look at how gorgeous those beets look in the morning sunlight, and doesn’t the mint look like it’s been dusted with icing sugar, ready to be dipped into some delicious cocktail or other?!

I was worried about how my micro rhubarb plant would fare but it didn’t seem bothered in the least.  Last year I bought a small rhubarb plant from my local town market but lost it soon after.  Turns out that it had somersaulted into an open bag of compost and all but died, but I found the teeniest of rhubarb sprout when I was potting up a few weeks ago.

My courgettes however, are a dried up shriveled mess.  Thanks weather!  It’s something that I might have gotten annoyed about in the past, but I’m consciously trying to eliminate stress and promote calm these days. Don’t get me wrong, it is easy to get annoyed when things don’t go to plan. Ok yes, I could have checked the forecast and brought my seedlings inside overnight, but I didn’t. And that’s ok. Not everything works out the way you planned, and that’s ok! I’m not reducing all of life’s problems to a few dead plants, but we find these situations crop up often – someone didn’t indicate in the car park, you’ve just got home and forgot the dog food – in the moment they can seem like the end of the world right?  And set us up for hours of irritable behaviour.  But if we instead truly examine and understand our emotional responses to situations, we can work to reduce unhelpful reactions to situations beyond our control. Otherwise we’ll be too emotionally spent to get riled up about the things that really matter.  Like Katie Hopkins.  Or the Tories. 🙂