The act of gardening is a very rewarding activity. The experience can be as simple or as profound as you want it to be. For me, gardening has generally been a function of utility. I focus on vegetables that I can use to supplement what I buy from the grocer and that have longevity in storage. Despite that, gardening has grown from a purely practical exercise of nourishing the body and it has transformed into a fulfilling experience that reaches beyond the practical into a broader understanding of nature. Here I am going to share a few of the insights that I have come to learn over the last few years.
One lesson that I learned early on was that I have minimal control over the outcome of the growing process. There are a lot of aspects of the growing process that are out of my control that have a really big impact on the performance of a garden, such as air temperature, sunshine, and rain or drought conditions. I choose to grow plants and vegetables without the aid of pesticides, and I don’t have a greenhouse. I can do many things that are in my control to make sure the seeds I’ve planted get off to a good start, but that does not ensure success. When something doesn’t work out the way that is expected despite best efforts, it can be easy to dwell on those failures, but I have found that it is best to learn from the experience, let it go, and move on.
Another lesson that gardening has taught me is patience. After months of snow and frigid winter temperatures, the beginning of spring brings an abundance of excitement and big plans for the garden.
After a burst of work getting the soil ready and planting seeds, there is generally a fairly long wait for plants to sprout and be something substantial, and even longer for the vegetables to ripen before they are ready. With the exception of buying mature plants from the garden centre, growing plants does not provide the instant gratification that we are so used to today. Often, like with planting seeds, there is no visible change in the landscape after hours of hard work. Instead, the result of labouring in the garden is more of a profound satisfaction after having to wait and see growth slowly come into itself over the weeks and months.
Over time, I have learned that gardening has a rhythm that ebbs and flows through the seasons. It is not all busy activity; rather, there is a balance of busy activities in the spring moving into the slow maintenance tasks of the summer, where I get to enjoy time relaxing and appreciating the work done in the spring before work picks up again in the autumn for the harvest and preparing the garden to rest in the winter when all gardening comes to a stop. While I came to gardening with the intention of growing edibles, I have stayed for the wisdom that it imparts when I am willing to listen.
The Heron and Rose 