Re: Why Do You Garden?
I was in college when I discovered gardening. I never paid attention as a kid (except to climb trees!) but in my junior year of college I ran into some very serious mental problems. It was the week before exam week in late April, and I was totally stressed and not handling classes and my mental issues well. I was food shopping when I saw transplants in the garden center. On the spur of the moment I bought some Better Boy and Early Girl and cherry tomato plants…and proceeded to go home to my rental house and rip out an old overgrown kitchen herb garden. It took me all day, I missed 3 classes, and turns out that vine I ripped up tons of was poison ivy. (!) But I had not felt so much at peace or relaxed as I did right then in many many months. Maybe years. I continued to baby my little 3’x 8′ plot all summer, returning home from my job in the evening and promptly kneeling down in the dirt to weed and relax and find peace. I credit the gardening with recovering from my mental problems, and to this day I dream of the feel of warm soil and splashing hoses and dirt under my fingernails in the winter.
