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Find Your Inner Writer

4 January 2023

Earth Self Repair Kit

By Órlaith Margeret McGee

My garden called to me in dreamtime. The strawberry root from the Isle of Skye spoke. They demanded to be named Braes – and more land. Braes is desperately in love with Maggie the magnolia. Braes desires to fruit under and up her. I am grateful each morning for celibacy. The rigors of freezing sweats needed solitary confinement. Lisa cuddles me despite my kicking, shifting heated fever dreams. I saw cornflowers helping Braes make a path to meet Maggie. I felt guided to garden.

All Soltsice I dowsed for geopathic stressors behind my roses. Lisa helped rake out plastics. With Sarah-Alice’s red string-ed smudge stick, I smoked out shadows. A blocked watercourse was revealed. From Solstice to Hogmanay I broke my last rake scraping plastics. My piles were a bother. I had to carry a cushion. My feet wouldn’t balance. If I stood too long I fell over. I had to sit. On tree stumps the seas threw in. On a cushion, preferably warmed by the heater before venturing out.

Under the plastics were earthworms thick as my fingers. Robin was first, then missus mistle thrush and then the two blackbirds. My earth-self repair kit began with my tiny croft filled with birds singing.

Every morning without my tormentors was a gift and a blessing. Downstairs disappeared Christmas Eve. Cruella and Creepy have not patrolled. I sat on my cushion in peace. I chanted. I meditated until I was at one with my breath. G texted with an update. You were in uni, happy, flourishing. Although I had instinctively known you were grand, it was transformative to have that simple confirmation. A crystal re-ignited in me. You are well, you are happy, you love me, you are doing me proud. This confirmation was as healing as defending myself in Court. Sarah-Alice’s smudge stick cleaned out my nose, sinuses. I prayed thanks in my tiny wee croft. Toxicities wafted out of me on my out breath. They disappeared into smoke.

‘Call me Peggy,’ I told Crow and Braes.