My garden is for the animals

I'm just here to take care of it (and them) 🦔

My favourite spot in my favourite season—November 2024

Welcome to The Lighthouse! A newsletter written by a Canadian author (Cait Flanders, that’s me!) who found herself living in the middle of nowhere in the UK. It’s deeply reflective and also intentionally lighthearted. There’s enough darkness online and in real life. Let’s hangout in the light. 🕯️

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Hi friend,

I’ve been buying a lot of stuff for The Lighthouse recently. Lamps. Picture frames. An oversized cushion for the couch. This seems to happen every 4-6 months here, and always after a trip back to Canada. It’s like I come home feeling ready to settle a little deeper into my life in the UK. Ready to put down more roots. Which usually means: buying things I wasn’t ready to buy in my first year, because they either felt frivolous or like huge commitments.

It’s funny to reflect on what felt like a commitment and what didn’t. For example: I had no problem buying a fridge and a washing machine, when I moved in. They did feel like big purchases! The first appliances I’d ever bought! And I was buying them in a new country! But maybe because they are essential, they didn’t feel too scary!? I bought them right away, without question.

On the other hand, it took 11 months for me to buy a bed frame and finally get my mattress off the floor. I said it was about the money, and that I wanted to wait until I found the “right” one… but on reflection, there was just something about a bed frame that felt too big. Too settled. It took even longer for me to finally buy anything for outside, because that felt like the biggest commitment of all.

When I first saw the listing for The Lighthouse, I knew I wanted to live here. I wanted this to be my home. I loved everything about it… except for the garden. Don’t get me wrong, friend, the garden is great. There’s a huge patio, two small lawns, multiple garden beds, tons of flowers and plants, and more. One time, after leaving a package in my shed (which I actually call the “creepy shed” and is the worst part of the garden), a delivery driver came back and commented on it all. “We don’t usually get to see people’s back gardens,” he said. “Yours is AMAZING!” And it’s true. But the reality is: I don’t need or use most of it.

Other than sitting on the patio sometimes, it’s not a space I occupy. The one thing I appreciate is the privacy. My back garden is almost completely surrounded by tall hedges, so nobody can see in (or into the back half of the house at all). I love that privacy, and I love how quiet and secluded it feels. But when I first saw it, I didn’t know if I could handle it all. I wanted to commit to the house, but I didn’t know if I could commit to the garden. More than anything, I didn’t want to commit to owning gardening tools.

When you buy something, you are choosing to maintain it. So the more you own, the more you have to maintain. The more you have to maintain, the more time you have to commit to your “things.” And the more time you are spending time maintaining things, the more committed you are to one place—and the less free you are to go and do whatever else you want, the way I used to. This is one of the concepts people talk about in the minimalism space that I actually agree with and would share with others (like I am right now). I wanted to live here, but I also wanted to hold onto a sliver of my freedom. That’s one of the reasons I hired someone to mow my lawns for me, instead.

For the first year I lived here, I paid Lisa (around £200/year, $250 US or $350 CAD) to do everything: mow the lawns, cut things back, etc. By the second year, I started doing more of the small jobs myself, but still got her to do my lawns. I liked chatting with Lisa and getting to know her. I even cried with her, when she told me she’d had to put her dog down. When she decided to close her business, I was sad to lose our connection. But to my surprise, I realized I didn’t want to hire a replacement. I wanted to try maintaining everything on my own.

It took 2 years for me to fully commit to the garden. And in the spring, I finally committed to buying and maintaining a lawnmower.

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I didn’t start gardening until I started writing about trauma. In fact, the two events occurred on the same day.

It was April 2023, and I’d decided I finally felt ready-enough to write about the traumatic experience I’d had in November 2019… the reason I’d stopped writing for so long. I’ve since deleted that post, but some of you will have read it and know what I’m talking about. For everyone else, well, I’ll probably talk more about it again one day. Right now, I’m less interested in what happened in 2019 and more interested in what happened when I finally started writing about it.

I didn’t know I was going to do anything in the garden that day. I’d never done anything in the garden, period, so I certainly couldn’t have anticipated that was about to change. I just wrote for an hour or so, then felt a stirring in my body. I needed to stop. I needed to get outside. I needed to get out of my head and into my body. I needed to do something with my hands. So, I opened the kitchen drawer, grabbed the scissors, went outside, and started trimming some of the plants and vines. I didn’t have a plan and I didn’t know what I was doing (as evident by the only tool I had—scissors). I just went outside and started cutting.

This happened for four days in a row, and each day it felt like a surprise. Of course, it makes sense to me now. Writing about that experience required me to relive it. And I couldn’t do that for very long, before I needed to stop and do something else. I guess I could’ve chosen anything, but the garden was right in front of me and I could see it needed to be tidied up a little. So, that’s what I directed my energy to.

It reminds me of something I learned in my first therapy session in January 2020, two months after the trauma occurred. My new therapist described a tactic she was using with me. I can’t remember what it’s called now, but she explained the process involved asking a direct question about the experience, then zooming out and asking a question about myself/my life more broadly. The idea is that it stops you from going too deep, too quickly. Shifts your perspective and focus. And prevents you from getting stuck in rumination or even dissociating—which would be easy to do, when talking about any trauma.

I hadn’t planned to perform a similar tactic on myself, when writing about it years later. This experience I was having in the garden was entirely intuitive. But I was essentially doing exactly what my therapist had done with me. Writing about one part of the story, then zooming out and focusing on something else instead. Never going too deep. Never dissociating. Just slowly telling the story, piece by piece, with lots of breaks in-between.

Over time, it has become one of my tools for processing any big feelings I might be having. If I need to get out of my head, I go outside and do something in the garden. And I’m sure there are all kinds of beautiful and lovely metaphors I could come up with to describe what I’m doing by tending to both, but honestly: sometimes it just feels good to tear some sh*t up from the ground.

This is how I first started taking over the small jobs I’d originally hired Lisa to do—and eventually committed to doing them all.

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Even with all the new purchases and settling in I’ve been doing, life at The Lighthouse has felt a little quieter this season. I have some sad news I’ve been holding into, friend. Something I didn’t want to tell you, but will now.

Mama Hedgie died this summer.

She’s the wild hedgehog I first found in my garden in July 2023 and immediately became obsessed with. On recommendation from Lisa, I bought her a little hedgehog house, which she promptly moved into. Then she had a late litter of hoglets (the name for baby hedgehogs!) last year, and I bought two more houses¹ for her kids, so the whole fam could live near each other (if they wanted to). They hibernated through the winter, but then the kids left in the spring and she had two more. I’d seen them all out together a few times in late-July/early-August. Then Tall Man and I went on our road trip around Wales for a week. When we got back, I found Mama Hedgie dead on the patio.

I was heartbroken.

I called my guy Terrance at the local chapter of the British Hedgehog Preservation Society (because of course that’s a thing) and did the thing you do to build community: I was vulnerable (aka I cried at him), and I asked him a question.

“I know everything dies…” I said. “We are all going to die one day. But I’m just curious: outside of old age, what are some common reasons hedgehogs die?”

Terrance said it was possible it was old age. He said unlike humans, hedgehogs will keep having litters of hoglets right up until it’s their time to go. So that was one possibility. But then he went on to explain it had actually been a really hard year for hedgehogs. Something to do with our extremely wet summer resulting in more slugs and snails than usual, and more of those slugs and snails being infected with a parasite called lungworm. He said any animal who ate the infected slugs or snails would get infected too, and die if there’s no intervention. But with hedgies only coming out at night, it’s almost impossible to know when they are sick. So, she could’ve died from old age. But based on my answers to his questions about how she looked, Terrance said it was more likely that she died from eating something and having this horrible infection fill up her lungs.

I cried thinking about her not being able to breathe. I cried thinking about this little creature dying for no good reason. I cried knowing it’s the circle of life, but also maybe a result of climate change too. I cried thinking about her hoglets. I cried because I had taken care of this little hedgehog for over a year… buying her a home, cleaning it out after winter, always putting hedgehog food and water out for her… and now she was gone. Watching her explore and eat and drink had been a joy… my evening meditation. Now, she was gone and our time together was over.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Terrance. “I don’t know why I can’t stop crying.”

“It’s absolutely fine,” he reassured me. “It shows how much you care.”

I was quiet for a moment.

“Would you consider burying her in your garden?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” I answered. “My dad always buried our dead pets in our backyard. And I’ve buried every dead bird I’ve found around my house. I feel like it gives them some dignity. I will definitely put her in the garden.”

“Well, then you’re putting her back into the earth… that’s a beautiful way to honour her.”

“And don’t forget,” he added. “Because of how well you’ve taken care of her, she had two babies this year! You’ve helped keep the hedgehogs going!”

This whole interaction was a kindness. And it was helping.

Terrance said if I’d seen the babies out exploring and eating and drinking then they were probably 6-7 weeks old and capable of taking care of themselves. I could put extra food out for them, mostly to deter them from eating slugs and snails. But they’d be ok without her, he assured me. And they have been.

The reason it’s been so quiet at The Lighthouse this season is because they hibernated early. I haven’t seen a Jr. Hedgie since the end of September. But I know they are here. I know because I’ve figured out where they are hibernating this year. And even though they are tucked away, I’m still watching over them.

The last time I saw Mama Hedgie with one of her babies—August 2024

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Despite everything I’ve just shared, I want to be clear: I don’t actually “garden.” I do not know what plants I have, and I do not plant new things. I do not water anything that’s out there (mostly because you don’t need to in this rainy country). In fact, I don’t do much at all throughout the spring and summer—other than mow the lawns and pull some weeds. Instead, I let the rest of my garden go wild for the hedgies and the bees, then do a big tidy-up² in the fall. So, while I’ve been buying things to make The Lighthouse feel cozier inside, I’ve also been doing a massive excavation outside.

This year’s Great British Garden Tidy-Up project started after I got back from Canada in late-September. I looked at the calendar and counted that I had 4 more brown bin (garden waste) pick-ups. I could fill a lot more than four. But I decided I’d focus on clearing out one section of the garden every two weeks, and get rid of as much as possible before the last pick-up.

Each section takes at least a few hours, though some have required a couple days’ worth of work. While I’m tidying up, I usually listen to podcasts and chat with my other animal friend, Birdy. She’s a female blackbird who has, for some reason, decided she likes me. Probably because she likes nibbling on the bird seed I put out in the morning or the hedgie food I put out at night. Animals are animals, after all. But I enjoy her company, and love watching her follow me around and eat the worms that come up as I clear things away.

Birdy hanging out with me while I pulled weeds in the summer

Once the bin is full, I’m done for that two-week period. And the day it gets emptied, I start filling it up again. This is the routine I’ve been in since September, and it was going well—until last week.

After seeing the news last Wednesday, I could not focus. I could not write. And I could not stand to be on my computer. So, I went outside and mowed the lawns. Then I started tidying up another section of the garden. Then another, and another. I filled the brown bin but kept going, until I was left with piles and piles of garden clippings and overgrowth and dead stuff and random rose vines and nettle. It all had to go. So then I started filling bags, and doing trips to the closest recycling centre, so I could dump them in the giant garden scraps bin there.

This is what I’ve been doing for the last week. Trying to write and work. But mostly, tidying up outside. It hasn’t been very productive on the writing side of things, but I’ve been thinking and processing a lot. I also happened to finish the Great British Garden Tidy-Up. I thought I’d have to quit after the final brown bin pick-up (which wasn’t until today). I didn’t think I’d be able to get to the rest until the spring. But now it’s done… and I don’t know what I’m going to do next.

I don’t know what’s next, friend. But as winter approaches here in the UK, I suppose it’s time to work on something inside. And keep putting food and water out for the birds each morning. Because if my dad has taught me anything, it’s that once you start feeding the birds, they will start to rely on you—especially in the winter.

I’m here for that commitment.

xx Cait

1. The fact that I bought 3 hedgehog houses without question, but slept on the floor for 11 months before finally buying myself a bed, probably tells you everything you need to know about my animal-loving heart. I COMMITTED to the hedgehogs!

2. I leave the leaves! They are good for the soil and the hedgies gather them for hibernation! But cut back everything else.