Growing Foxgloves in Spain

The delicate shoots of foxglove and primrose push through the Spanish earth. Their survival a fragile experiment in memory and longing.  

I kneel in the garden, fingers pressing into the soil, testing its warmth, its willingness to nurture the flora of my past life.  

It is a quiet, meditative act, one that allows me to feel connected to the place I left behind.  

Here’s one thing I love about gardening. Each plant represents a different memory – a childhood spent running through the fields of Ireland, an afternoon spent weeding alongside my mother, the way the evening air once smelled of damp earth and heather. 

Bryan would have laughed at my (futile) determination to bring Irish plants into this dry Spanish climate.  

He always said I had a stubborn streak. I can hear his teasing voice as I carefully water the shamrocks, whisper encouragement to the foxgloves. It has been nearly a year since he passed and the weight of that loss still lingers, thick as a morning fog.

Gardening was always our quiet ritual.

A funny pastime to enjoy as a couple, perhaps.

But gardening was always a shared project filled with patient instructions and stolen kisses between digging and planting. Now, in Spain, I try to translate that ritual into a new climate, a different kind of earth. Some days, I find solace in it.  

Other days, the frustration of struggling plants mirrors the way I feel.

Like something struggling to take root in foreign soil. 

Some plants struggle. The damp-loving heather, which once thrived in the Irish mists, turns brittle under the Spanish sun. Others surprise me with their resilience. The foxgloves, temperamental as they are, have taken hold.

I whisper encouragement to them, as I once did for Bryan when he doubted himself.

I learn to shade the most delicate plants from the midday sun and to adjust their watering to the rhythm of this new land.  

There are moments of quiet victory. A single bloom on a plant I thought had died, a bud forming on the struggling shamrocks. 

The act of tending to these plants grounds me.  

In my grief, I have often felt untethered, floating between past and present, Ireland and Spain, memory and reality. But here, in the soil, in the scent of crushed lavender and the fragile hope of a new bloom, I find myself rooted once more.  

I realise that, much like these plants, I too am learning to adapt.

And while I may never thrive in quite the same way I did before, I can still grow, still bloom, still create something beautiful in this new soil…

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