On Gardening and Creativity
I often refer to my mom as a crazy gardening lady. Ever since I can remember, she spent her summers off as a teacher spending a bazillion hours a day in her vegetable and flower gardens. Every fall she’s got hoards and hoards of veggies to harvest, and we enjoy the fruits (or vegetables, rather) of her labour well into spring and even beyond if it’s been preserved.
The second week of May, my mom had surgery, so the Monday of May long weekend, my sister and I (and my herd of children) descended upon mom’s garden to do her planting for her after my brother had tilled it for her. Mom was of course there to supervise and instruct from her garden chair. I think we chose the hottest day we could have possibly chosen to tackle the job. It was fun to get started and make a plan and poke fun of my poor mom attempting to run the show from her chair (we’re not the most passive or obedient children, lol). My sister and I both have a fondness of gardening, albeit we realized a LOT different than our mom’s fondness for gardening! Mom’s garden is a “production” sized garden with three different varieties of potatoes, rows of corn, wide long rows of carrots, spinach, kale, lettuces, beets, beans, asparagus, cucumbers, zucchini, and usually a couple other fun things. I don’t think either one of us realized the undertaking we had happily volunteered for! It didn’t take us long to wither under the beating sun and long before we were actually “done” - we were DONE! Ha! Not the best free labour, haha. I know we were both relieved when we got rained out! My kids and I will venture back out there this weekend to finish the planting and I’m grateful that us kids (and MY kids) are all able to be there to pitch in and return one of the many favours our mom does for us all the time!
The point of all this is actually an epiphany I had while I was marking rows with my sis. As a kid I spent lots of time helping mom in the garden. My first sunburn of the summer was ALWAYS in the garden. I loved the flower gardens and when I moved in with my hubby and had my OWN plots of dirt, I was beyond excited to get digging and planting and making them my own. Fast forward to a couple years later with a new baby and the subsequent five or so years of babies and toddlers (and horrid amounts of rain), I couldn’t keep up with the weeds or the harvesting, I threw out numerous bags of seed potatoes because they rotted in the garage before I got them planted, and there have been times I’ve refused to have people at my house because the grass in my front flower beds was so tall and thick it was beyond embarrassing to me. My gardens became just more "jobs" I felt like I was failing at, so I let them go. I decided I was done and my veggie garden was summer-fallow for a few years. My giant flower beds have been partially covered with landscaping fabric and mulch and planted with low-maintenance shrubs.
A couple years ago, I started a Pinterest board called, “Maybe I’ll Have A Garden Again Someday.”
Last year a girlfriend of mine introduced me to the idea of zero-till (lasagna) gardening and my spark for spending time in my garden was re-ignited. I spent days last spring making borders around “mini” gardens in my big garden and mulching some paths. I didn't do my whole garden, but got a chunk done. I got strawberry plants and had a neighbour build me an enclosure to keep away the birds and to make it easy to mulch and care for them. The weeds still got a little out of control over the summer because I still detest weeding when it’s 30 degrees and the mosquitoes and horse flies are thick, but I’ve created a space that’s more manageable through these times. We have a separate tiller and mower now so I never have to wait for someone to change the attachments on my garden tractor before I can mow or till and in the warm sunshiny days of spring, there’s nowhere I want to be more than out in my gardens planting and planning and rearranging. I love collecting rocks (much to my husband’s dismay) for borders and have been spray painting some old wooden high chairs to house flower pots.
It’s FUN. And I’ve let go of the expectation that it has to be perfect. I’ve accepted the fact that I would rather drink coffee at my camper in July than schluck away in my garden weeding and I try to create as much “low maintenance” beauty in my yard as possible.
I realized while planting my mom’s garden that gardening for me isn’t about the production or even the harvesting or the preserving, although I DO enjoy fresh garden produce and the excitement of reaping what the kids and I have sewn. My epiphany was that my garden is a place I can express my creativity. It’s a part of my spiritual self-care. I love putzing around and seeing what I can create. It’s taken me years to realize this and to find my place in the gardening world and to understand that what it looks like for me doesn’t have to look like anyone else. It just has to bring me JOY, and the fact that what brings me joy in my garden might be different than what brings others joy in THEIR gardens is what this journey is all about, isn’t it?!?
Are you a gardener?? I'd love to hear YOUR gardening story!
Love,
Elsa