I ask myself: ”"But is an asparagus bed necessary? And so right now? Yes, I actually think so.”.

My inner dialogue on a garden walk with coffee in hand made me sit down to write. About being in the unknown, in the recurring roller coaster that being next to a cancer process can be – even if it's not even me who is affected. And yet. Even though cancer and chemo are a needle-stick operation that affects a specific person, specific body parts and specific cells, its consequences reach wider. Out in rings of love.
I am one of those few who, in love, fluctuates with ups and downs in treatments, prognoses, statistics, scans, and checkups.
I am, in professional terms, a relative. In my terminology and experience, I am more affected.
I set out to write about how to deal with it. Not as a guide for others. More as an honest reminder that we each have to figure out how to deal with what is, when what is is overwhelming, violent, and difficult.
The fact that I want to write about asparagus beds is not to distract from the fact that it is difficult. It is just one of the strange ways it can look.

Did you know that it takes almost 5 years before you can actually harvest green asparagus from the time it is planted in the ground? If I remove the weeds now and lay down cardboard and build a five-meter-long raised bed and plant the asparagus crowns now, something good will happen in the future. I love green asparagus. Danish, that is. When it is local and therefore in season. The few times I have broken an asparagus directly from the plant – they still stand as moments of juicy, crispy heaven that I can still taste.
So yes, an asparagus bed is actually needed now. Let me break it down into chunks: Hope is needed. Some of us have a brain that tends to believe more in horror scenarios than thoughts that everything will work out.

With the asparagus plants, there is something really concrete that I can do. And that is another factor that is important to me: When there is really a lot that I can't do anything about, and at the same time it is something really crucial that I have no control over, then it is really good to have something that I can do. can do. Which, by the way, may consume some of the energy that otherwise abounds in my body and runs into the usual anxiety channels and shuts down everything, so that I can fight the threatening lion. Our ancient brain still handles everything that feels unknown and dangerous, as if it were lions on the savannah that need to be fought. It's just not very helpful, because how do you fight a lion that takes the form of uncertainty about test results in blood tests and scans? In the form of thoughts that run from 0 to 100 into future scenarios that are always biased to prepare me for the worst and therefore already put the body on high alert.
That's where the asparagus bed comes in. I can't fight, eliminate or escape the uncertainty that in waves feels like a ravenous lion's mouth. Of course there is fear and sadness in advance (and on the back of previous experiences). Even when I use all my strength to dig up roots and level a new bed. It is not a miracle cure for the conditions that in me at times not only feel threatening, but unbearable. It does not remove my wonder at how others live carefree, as if everything is fine. Don't they know? That everything can change in a split second?
Then I dig a little more. I figure out how to make the soil with the right pH value for asparagus sprouts.
I can act. I can be grounded and connected to the world around me. There I can better receive what is coming. I can act on something good for the future, I can get a break by being in the body, in the world with bare feet on the ground rather than fighting with the lions in my head.

Time passed, it is now late summer. There is still wilderness and no asparagus bed. The test results came, they were good, and suddenly an asparagus bed is not so essential. Now it is more about a sun lounger in the shade and a gentle slowness to the reactions that also always comes after celebration and relief.
The asparagus bed can always come. In the suffocating uncertainty of spring, it was a vital pocket of self-care to plan it. One day I may build it out of desire and energy. As a gesture to the future and all that is well.

Photo: Dorte Lunderskov