Pick your battles and accept small victories when they arrive.

One of the downsides to gardening and having a disability isn’t the obvious, most people would think that all the negatives are related to the physical, but alot is mental. The mind is often willing but the body is unable.

Many times I wake up and my head wants to get up go outside and potter about but more times than note my body is screaming at me, no! This can and often does lead to the feeling of being very low, after all its a realisation that we cant do what we used to or what others can and its something we are always internally fighting with.

The trick is to pick your battles. On days when you’re not feeling great and you have a list of jobs, don’t pick the hardest. don’t fight the cards that have been delt you that day, just fold and concede. This is not defeat this is a tactical retreat.

Struggling to do something will only be a hindrance in the long-term, it will drag you down probably make you feel physically worse and in my case normally means I lose more time in the garden as it then takes me far longer to recover.

Today I got up and I feel rubbish, I really wanted to go to my physio and then get in the garden and tidy my cold frame. I was going to force myself to do it too but then the rain descended and I conceded today as a rest day. The way my disability affects me seems to be that for every day I do something physical I then need two days to recover. I have nicknamed these my rest days as psychologically it sits better. I take ownership of my disability and tell it today I rest, because I want to, not because you are making me rest.

And when the weather rolls in and the garden is too cold, wet or windy to do anything have a rest day and take a small victory and live to garden another day.