Three years ago I collapsed into depression. I gave up my well-paid teaching job and went back to live with my parents. My girlfriend was baffled and eventually left me. I had no friends left after years of ignoring people. I would spend every day reading blogs but not writing them - not doing anything, in fact. I was too afraid to do anything. Convinced that everything I touched turned to dust, I tried nothing and achieved nothing.

Five months passed.

I resisted all their attempts to make me see a doctor but my long-suffering family held to their belief that I would pass out of it. This looked unlikely, since all I did was eat, read blogs, drink and sleep.

My life was at a complete standstill and the strange thing was I didn't realise it - I just saw myself as taking a break, even though I could feel, dimly, the pressure of my fears whenever I thought of trying to achieve anything. I knew that I was afraid, but I stood, for a long time, outside of the reality of my life.

Then my dad bought me six ragged, thin tomato plants and a handful of seeds. He showed me a patch of untamed garden, about four feet by eight, and told me to get to work. Reluctantly, but with nothing better to do, I turned the soil and planted my tomatoes and seeds.

Nothing happened.

I didn't expect anything, of course. But dutifully I watered them each day, not sure why I was bothering, and pulled away weeds. As May turned into June, we experienced some of the hottest weather ever seen in Europe and the skies were a constant, oppressive blue. I began, gently and slowly, to worry about my plants and to water them carefully in the stifling, dusky evenings.

I saw my tomatoes grow taller and bushier, then grow flowers. I liked to watch them of an afternoon. They looked happier than me in the heat. Something was poking up through the dry soil where I had carefully lined my seeds. I knew they were radishes but I had no idea what radishes looked like. That was a jolt - I was nearly thirty, well educated, a professional - I had no idea what a radish was. I could see the gaps in my life for what they were. Missed opportunities, too many years spent in my own, narrow field. No wonder I had eventually collapsed in upon myself.

During July the heatwave deepened and sleep became even harder than it had been before. My tomato plants came to life, surging in all directions, taller, wider, growing new branches from every existing branch and swelling with fruit. I tied them to canes, weeded them, checked them for slugs - and was horrified when I found that a tomato had been attacked! I took it as a personal attack and vowed not to let the slugs win. They didn't.

Then, in August, after the drought had broken, I tasted my first tomato. It was small - the patch of garden wasn't in a great position, I later learned - but I was infected with delight, and recorded each picking. My happiness grew with my plants; my interest grew as I started reading about gardening, pruning, looking at my handiwork and by the time I had to cut them down - they had collected blight in the damp of late August - I had found a new job and a new self-respect.

That wasn't it - it was a long hard road from there, which is ongoing - but it was the start of my recovery. And it was all due to those spindly tomatoes. Spindly and weedy they may have been, but they were mine and I had looked after them. If I could do it for them, why could I not do it for myself?

Learn more about this author, Lawrence George.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

---

Add your voice

Know something about Memoirs: My great, true, personal garden story?
We want to hear your view. Write now!