finding and keeping your sanity in the garden

[Reinbeau]

Ok, a vent that's been brewing for awhile now:

I need my garden too, but this summer was such a bust, getting sick and all, it's a mess in my veggie garden, my tomatoes fell over, I didn't do much with them - at least it isn't a weedy mess thanx to great friends helping out. I had such great plans for this summer in the garden.....

I need to garden yet right now I can't go out there. It's awful. I sit here on this computer distracting myself from what needs to be done because I don't know where to start, and if I do start, I get interrupted by having to leave and teach and then by the time I get back I have to do something else - if I can't see a project through out there I don't start it. Dumb, but paralysis is what I call it, and I'm paralyzed right now.

Although tonight I did go out to the garage to get a nice onion (I did get great onions this summer, and shallots, and garlic), and then I stopped at the herb bed to pluck some parsley, and to pull some carrots (they also did pretty good, I think I even have good parsnips out there!) to put into the beef noodle stew I made - along with russet potatoes from the Maine garden. So why am I complaining? Because I just feel inadequate lately, I guess.

This winter I'll plot and plan to try again next season! And I'll try to see that I really didn't have such a horrid season, just an interrupted one.

 

[HiDelight]

I wonder if most of us are type A here ?

Vfem no way you right???? LOL!!! honey I am glad you let loose!

I was going too but did not want the recovery period!!!

I just had a wonderful time iwth the sweetest of people at a very lovely harvest party!!!! thank you thank you!!!

Rein you have had a hard time of it!!! OMG you are right!!! and I think if i had a stomping icon good enough I would stomp it for you

I do not know if this will help but when I feel like you are feeling now ..I take a mental grid in my brain and just figure out what I can do with the time and energy I do have ..it may be just the right side of the front garden or small part of anything .. ..but I do the entire bit make it look perfect then stop myself no matter how I feel ..energy or not
the next time I will do the left side then the front part then work my way around the yard until the whole mental grid is completed ..of course then it starts again row

today I bought some very nice garlic my husband started to separate it and label the bags then he looked at me said "you are just going to toss this in one big pile to look at it when we get home aren't you? then we will never know again what the heck we bought right? "
right

I am type A in my work ..and a type B in the garden I can let stuff go there and not have to be the best hardest worker, have the most spotless area, be the nicest person, take the most crap or be the most perfect
(I am never any of that but at work I strive for it every freaking day!)

I feel so rested today I hope others had time to just sit and enjoy what they have for a while

you have to or why on earth do we do all this hard work anyway?

 

[HiDelight]

Everytime I try to sit and read this something happens! I get a headache first, now I'm hung over....

Ok, I've gotten half way through and I know I'm going to agree with this. I NEED my garden. Especially when other things are just not working for me anymore.

I'm glad you have us as well as we have you here too! This is a great resource on so many levels. Not just educational :bouquet

thank you you work too hard!

 

[Rosalind]

To me, my garden represents a little bit of hope.

There's an old story about a preacher who liked to preach about the end times being nigh, and how any minute now the whole world would be slaughtered/raptured/possessed etc., but when his congregation visited him at home, they found him planting trees in his garden. The trees were young and wouldn't bear fruit for many years, so the congregation was both comforted that he didn't really think this, but also angry that the preacher was a hypocrite.

So, my garden, especially the orchard, is a sign of my faith that somehow, I'll be around to harvest the fruit, whether that's in a few months or a few years. Faith in my own strength to deal with any challenges, especially.

It's also a reassurance that I can, in the smallest way, stick up for things I believe in. I believe that maintaining genetic diversity in crops is more important than fattening Monsanto's shareholders' wallets. I believe in treating the folks who work the fields with dignity and respect. I believe in the right to my own aesthetics in food, rather than accepting the mediocrity of mass-produced yuck as "good enough." I believe that quality and safety are important, that I have the right to demand food and water free from poisons and pathogens. I believe that monocropping keeps farmers peasants and enriches agribusiness, that alternative farming techniques can be piloted by anyone with a backyard, and that cost-effectiveness when it comes to food is not about shopping at Wal-Mart but about being self-sufficient: it costs 1/5th the price to grow your own veggies than buy them in even the cheapest supermarket on sale. I believe that eating seasonally ties us to the land we live on, and enriches our respect for the earth. I believe that gardening teaches common sense when the agribusiness guys are claiming that this, that or the other thing is impossible--you know it IS possible, because you live it every day. I believe that careful observation of nature is more educational than any teevee show, and I believe that I am getting very well-educated indeed.

 

[HiDelight]

Oh Rosalind awesome thank you so much for that you are so right! it does give us control ..

I have always looked at it as a place I could have no control and try to do my best ..listen to others ..take randomn chances and be blissfully surprised at what worked and what didn't then try to learn from that ...and I still think this is true ..but at the same time there is a huge element in the control of making choices about how things are produced ..I take as much care to go "organic" with flowers and ornamentals as I do with what I put in my mouth ...or in my friends or families mouths ....what we choose to grow and what battles are worth fighting ...we do have lots of control (good news for us control freaks!) so there is a medium found in the garden as well!

ok I promised a story about mentally ill and gardening and I think Rosalind your idea of control and purpose really makes me want to tell it now! it has always been a burr in my side that I live so close to a place that has such amazing grounds ..and well here is the story as I know it ..I do have to add a disclaimer and if anyone knows this story better than I do please chime in ..mine was a hand me down and I have wandered around collected stories form patients I grew to love and also employees I have gotten to know over the years..I did my training there 100 years ago in college .....things may not have been as blissfully nice as I have been lead to believe but I have to believe because right now no one feels our mental health care is in such great shape and this did seem to be a great program for giving people purpose and control in a place where all your choices are taken away and you are stripped to the bare minimum medicated with huge cocktails of miserable drugs ..in order to preserve your body and mind???

back in the day they ran this hosptial as a place for people to rest and get better ..it was more spa oriented ..ok so they had a few lobotomies and some pretty scary stuff too like ice baths and electro shock..aside from all this trauma.....they had beautiful terraced gardens where patients could grow vegetables and flowers ..and sell them ..it was a therapy based on getting people out in the fresh air to dig in the dirt produce beautiful healthy food and then learn the business of selling them ..how cool a therapy was that? I have seen pictures of the magnficant gardens along with the sales they had going on ..the money from what I heard went back into the program .. ..well laws being what they are...genuinely (I think) intended to protect people from being used and abused ..worked poorly in this case ..and it was considered I guess indenturing (is that the correct word)
to have people who are in a hospital doing gardening ..it was ok to lobotomize a person with out consent of the patient if deemed medically needed but you could not have them growing plants because that was akin to slavery ...ok enough ranting .I do not really know the actual reason this is all hear say but mostly true and should be done now darn it! .....there was even a beautiful orchid growing project ....

anyway I think if more people were prescribed garden therapy for mental as well as physical health ..we could have community pea patches not just for folks struggling to feed families but also for the mentally ill and homeless folks to grow things ...ok so we say peeing on a compost heap is a good thing? I know plenty of places where pee could be redirected into a better place than the side of a building ...

I guess I just get mad because homeless live in parks and I know plenty of brilliant mentally ill homeless people if they were given a shovel and rake would clean up a spot an grow a garden

gardening helps heal all kinds of wounds mentally and pysically and I think if we worked at getting it back in our mental healthcare faciilities half way houses..into the heart of the city ..or even with a grow light in an appartment ...if got people growing and selling at farmers markets or even donating themselves to the shelters they frequent

I know for my level of crazy ...feeling unable to cope growing things is amazing therapy why do we not encourage people worse off than us to try it too?

thanks for letting me babble

ok that is just something that stirs me up and I wanted to share with my kindreds