I like rhubarb. When we first met, rhubarb and i, we were both struggling with life. It was over five years ago, during my time as a participant in the wellbeing programme of the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust. I was one of the pioneers walking around Jo's allotment - her new project for the Swindon wellbeing group. There was little to see - an apple tree and two neglected sheds. There were no plots dug, no pond as there is now, the plot was empty except, someone spotted a rhubarb stalk - a single fifteen inch tall rhubarb stalk, topped with a single leaf.
How long had it been there? How did it get there? Whatever the answer, it was clearly a sad and struggling rhubarb plant, yet somehow it was surviving. I felt empathy with this lonely stalk of rhubarb, so i claimed it with a plan to replant it where i hoped to help it flourish.
I met my rhubarb a year after i met Jo in a tiny room in Swindon. Yes, the room was small, but to me the significance of that meeting was huge.
The meeting was arranged for me by Mind - joining a wellbeing group had been suggested to me as a first step by my community psychiatric nurse. Leaving my flat and using public transport were both high hurdles for me, but i had been feeling a growing want to knock them both away.
I had read their leaflet and it answered most of my doubts. One was, what has the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust got to do with mental and emotional wellbeing? My thinking proved too narrow - think less of foxes, deers and badgers and more of meadows, woods and valleys. Of trees and flowers, birds and butterflies, of walks and talks - i can go on now - but then i was clearly ignorant when it came to nature. That's why i wanted to talk to a wildlife person, someone who could fire me up, enthuse me with nature, someone wearing their dark green shirt. In walked Jo from the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust!
The meeting lasted less than an hour, but i was enthused and fired up! I wanted to be outdoors, whatever the weather, i felt myself wanting to be active again, and most pleasing for Chatsworth House, I wanted to meet new friends - amazing - i was truly on my way back.
After that meeting, i asked to join the wellbeing group and was accepted - that was the day my life changed.
I'm now off to the allotment, yes it only early March but my rhubarb is indeed flourishing, its now a happy multi-stalked, hugely generous, vigorous rhubarb plant and it needs picking.
