Gardening with ME: gardening, blogging & ME

The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that there wasn't a June #GardeningWithME post, and that in general, I've not been blogging quite so much.

Geranium Ann Folkard next to my garlic crop

When you garden with ME or another chronic illness, it not only means you have to garden more slowly and be careful where you spend your limited energy. It also means there are periods when you cannot garden much, if at all. This is one of those times for me. My ME has got worse recently and I'll confess it feels like it's a bit of a struggle to manage the garden. Which is frustrating as of course now is when the kitchen garden is starting to produce at an accelerated rate, and the flower borders are bursting, and falling over, at the edges.

My health, in turn, has had an impact on my blogging about the garden and related topics. I have posts I want to write, on garlic, on the herb bed, on a recent visit to Scampston Walled Garden and the North York Moors. But I haven't had the energy. In fact, I'm at the point now where I have to decide whether to spend my limited spoons* (energy), when I have it, to blog about gardening, or getting something done in the garden.

For now, being in the garden, enjoying it, harvesting and cooking the produce, is taking priority. And all my remaining energy. Even then, I only get to garden if I have enough energy after doing some studying (I'm doing a long-distance bookkeeping course) or trying to undertake daily tasks such as having a shower (who knew taking a shower used up so much energy?!) or doing the dishes.

Yesterday, I picked about 1.5kg of strawberries. It was great to be out there in the garden, in the sun, with strawberries. But it was also exhausting. I had no energy to do anything with the strawberries and went to bed. Today, my one goal, was to make strawberry ice cream. Which I did, then I went to bed. You get the idea.

So the blog is going to take a bit of a back seat for a while; hopefully not too long. I hope, and am trying my best to manage things, so that this worsening of the ME is only temporary and I'll still get to write those posts on garlic etc.

When you are gardening with ME, sometimes there aren't enough spoons to both garden and blog about gardening. Any gardener will understand. If it a toss up between being in the garden or writing about the garden, being in it wins every time.

Strawberry ice cream. From my own strawberries and limited spoons. *proud face*

*If you don't know about spoon theory, I highly recommend this article by Christine Miserandino, from where it originates.

* * * * *
I welcome your thoughts and comments. And if you blog about gardening with ME/a chronic illness, do link to this post in your blog and leave a comment below with a link to your post, so we can all find each other.

About Gardening with ME

Twitter hashtag: #GardeningWithME

Recent Gardening with ME posts...
  Gardening with ME: kitchen garden update
  Gardening with ME: the importance of the right chair