cultivating love

I was giggling yesterday because the car smelled like horse and/or cow poo. It wasn’t particularly funny – it was a typical sticky  summer day which only served to deliver the aroma to a very authentic, revolting level of freshness – but I was giggling out of sheer delight. I’d just decided, more or less on a whim, to purchase some herbs to grow, along with some potting mix and helping-poo-stuff and I was on my way home to put plan into action, to put plants into pots.

It occurred to me then that at exactly this time last year I undertook pretty much the same activity, all with the same fervour and associated hope: that my herbs will thrive and that following on from this (naturally) I will create fabulous, divine smelling-tasting meals forever more, host grateful, gushing friends to sophisticated, but in a totally green and alternative way, dinner parties, and of course that I will somehow meet just the right rugged salt-of-the-earth dude and be able to say with winning confidence that I GROW HERBS REALLY WELL in order that he fall promptly in love with me...  

And then upon arrival at this final thought – the one connected to my ostensibly malcontent heart – it occurred to me that at exactly this time last year (as it is now) it was Valentine’s Day. 

Of course, of course. 

That would explain my sudden desire to nurture basil and coriander and sweet apple mint into blossoming, aromatic life as less sudden and whimsical and more as desperate consolation for my forlorn lack of something (okay, someone) to love.

And nor do I have someone to love me. No right rugged salt-of-the-earth dude to care for me, no. 

Perhaps then my coddling of herbs, my will to have them rupture in natural splendour, is not about  me caring for someone, because really, where's the joy in that, and is more about me enacting the way in which I ideally, romantically, ever so deliriously, would like to be regarded.  

“You're the only girl I've seen for a long time that actually did look like something blooming...”

Need I describe the gymnastics of my heart when I read this line only a little over two days ago? Oh yes, Mr Fitzgerald, tender is the night. 

Just not my night. 

My nana asked me the other day, only after informing me how well my same-sex, same-age cousin was doing (you know, about to have her second child type of well), if I have a boyfriend yet. 

No, I told her. Not yet.

And yet, I wanted to tell her, I have so much and so many to love already, I just really don’t think I’d be able to fit it (okay, him) in. What with coffee and the American Indie Season on SBS and all, the changing evening light, the seductive Mr Fitzgerald, and of course the smell of fresh basil and coriander and sweet apple mint... 

Honestly, it really is the sweetest. I don't need a freaking boyfriend. Not yet.