Why I'm Trying to Spend More Time in the Garden.
When we moved into our new house in July, our amazing landlord had pre-planted and prepped our garden for us so it would be ready when we were settled in. Andrew and I had basically never gardened in our lives, aside from planting perennials in flower beds and helping pull weeds here and there growing up.
Coming into the new house we were so excited to have a garden and to have the opportunity to grow vegetables in our backyard to use to cook dinner (and by that I mean, for Andrew to use to cook dinner). The first couple weeks we were living here everything was basically ready to go, so we would pick a few veggies here and there and use them throughout the week. After about two weeks it got to the point where we would see something ready to pull and make note to get to it, then never get around to it. All the heavy rain this summer quickly encouraged weeds to overtake a lot of the space and basically our garden became a pit of neglect and embarrassment. Mainly embarrassed at ourselves for not being able to maintain something that was totally laid out for us.
Over the past few weeks, I've been having a lot of struggles with social media, the pulls of Instagram, and the direction of my blog. I've found myself more and more at need of an outlet to escape the pull of technology and keep me eyes off of a screen. So, that's why I'm trying to spend more time in the garden, even just a couple hours a week. At this point, basically all I'm doing is pulling out all the weeds we let take over and trying to discover what produce is still thriving, buried underneath it all. But, the simple joy of spending a little time outside in the sunshine and doing something with my hands is bringing a lot of peace into my life. The meditative task and somewhat mindless labor has really helped me feel refreshed from my day to day, and of course the beautiful feeling of bringing something that came from nothing in the ground into the house to put on the dinner table is very rewarding as well. I'm no gardener, my thumb is actually closer to purple, but I'm definitely trying to find joy in gardening, and a new sort of pride in something. (oh yeah, and I fixed the welcome sign!) Would love to know what you're favorite hobbies are, and how you find joy in an activity!
