Gardening as therapy.

Tobin Fraley ~

Earth

Most of us spend our lives at a distance from the very ground beneath our feet. We build barriers between it and us; floors, streets, sidewalks, patios, driveways and even lawns, all to keep the earth at bay, as if by touching this ground we become less than civilized. At least this is what we are taught; that we should avoid this dirt, that it is filled with disease or worse.

Yet those who work with the earth know something different. The farmers whose hands are etched from years of working the land or the gardeners who cannot wait for spring to feel the rich moist soil between their fingers can feel the life within it. There are still others who simply celebrate this dirt, who walk on it, dig in it and live with it for no other reason than to connect to an element of ourselves that is beyond basic, beyond ancient.

Dust to dust; the earth is where we came from and it is what we will become.

(This will be read at my funeral. It is who I am and what I truly believe. I NEED to be digging in the dirt. It keeps me sane and gives me rest. I call it my "God time".)

Alva—Beautiful post. I wish I could see your secret garden. I spent 26 years in an apartment with a balcony and a couple of window boxes which were fun, but five years ago my husband and I moved to a house on a half acre. The previous owners were an elderly couple who had both been master gardeners. They had lived here 15 years and were relocating to a continuum of care place because she could no longer manage him or the stairs and he had dementia. The front of the house had roses, hydrangeas, peonies, phlox, a pair of lilac bushes and more but all overgrown with weeds. I found a tiny, fancy. Bottle buried in the front that I assume was a perfume bottle.

The back had a narrow strip along one portion of fence that must have been an herb garden because it had all gone to wild mint. I have returned the front to all its glory and expanded the back strip to a pollinator garden. I added a shade garden to the east side of the house and a huge expanse of hellebores to the west side. I also added hummingbird feeders and planted native honeysuckle on the arch and irises by the mailbox.

my husband has a vegetable garden with tomatoes, peppers, arugula, lettuce, Swiss chard, kale, cucumbers, green beans, 10 kinds of herbs, and he has also planted two apple trees, a peach tree, and ordered a fig tree.

I also planted a goldenrod and aster garden which flowers later August through October to help the pollinators.

Three years after we arrived (or two years ago) I persuaded my parents to move up from 800 miles away to a house three miles down the road from mine, because my dad also had dementia and caring for him on her own plus the stairs and her own mobility issues were too much for my mom. Sadly, they couldn’t garden anymore except we did help my dad grow tomatoes in barrels on their patio the first summer.

Even more sadly — but in many ways also a huge relief — my dad passed away two days ago, almost exactly two years after they arrived. It was a difficult 5-6 years with his dementia and an absolutely harrowing last week of his life. The first thing I did after viewing his body with my mom and taking her home again, was walk my favorite meadow nature path. Last evening after a long day of helping my mom with the arrangements, I sat and weeded between the cracks in my stone patio.

I agree with Alva to just look. But I would also add listen. I heard the sound of a blue jay bathing itself in the birdbath. And later on, I heard the whinny of an eastern screech owl.

Now of course, I do not know what the future will bring for my mom except she will get older and of course pass away, no one knows whether in a day or many more years. But I fee certain that gardening and nature will be a help to me through the rest of her life and I hope for years beyond.

I also hope that when my husband I can no longer manage here, the new owners discover all the plants and possibilities of our property and continue to enjoy and cultivate them.

So, I just went outside to look at my pepper plants 🫑.

They have grown quite a bit. I checked on the LSU agriculture site before planting them because they are really good for getting advice about planting for our region.

They have little white flowers on them now, so I guess they will start producing soon.

I loved gardening with my grandfather (mom’s dad) when I was a kid.

My dad had a green thumb and grew peppers. His family farmed. Daddy grew up in Florida and his parents died before I was born.

This is my first attempt at growing vegetables. I am looking forward to eating my peppers!

Golden and Alva,

One of my favorite pastimes as a kid was playing in the dirt! Mom would give us an old spoon and a pitcher of water to create our masterpieces with mud.

We made mud pies and so much more. Great fun! That doesn’t have to stop just because we are adults now!

I am so glad that my mom thought imagination was important for a kid to have.

Nowadays, we often see kids who have overloaded schedules and they don’t have time for simple pleasures, or to learn how to dream, imagine or simply have fun being silly.

Wonderful description, Alva. If you are as good a gardener as you are a writer, your garden must be beautiful, indeed.

I agree about hands in the dirt. R wears gloves to garden. I don't. I need hands in the dirt. Actually there are microbes in the dirt that make you feel happy.

I don't agree with MKR that we can do without love. Count the number of love songs, poems, writings...

Alva,

You live in the perfect climate for gardening! Everything blooms there. I love the gardens in your area.

I love visiting botanical gardens. One of my favorites is the one in Golden Gate Park. It is lovely.

I enjoy going to our botanical garden in City Park in the spring. Our sculpture garden is pretty too. As soon as summer comes around, it’s way too hot and humid here in New Orleans.

You’re lucky not to have the intense heat and humidity that we have.

I have always loved the bogenvillia in your area!

Went through my old commonplace books for the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings book quote. She had bought a Florida old plantation on the bayous. Either oranges or coffee I cannot remember, but this comes from her book 1942 Cross Creek Stories and I love how it tells of our connection to the soil:

"We were bred of earth before we were born to our mothers. Once born, we can live without mother or father, or any other kin, or any friend, or any human love. We cannot live without the earth or apart form it, and something is shrivelled in a man's heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men".

I do think our hands must touch the dirt of the earth. I do feel that connection all the time.

Alva, your garden sounds lovely, a true place of peace. Hubby and I returned yesterday from a trip to visit our nurse daughter. After unpacking I was outside, pruning and weeding before the sun set. It just feels good to be outdoors in nature. After work today, I’m on the hunt for more of my favorite annuals

Alva this was the most beautiful thing to read about your lovely garden and all it's secrets. You truly are a treasure.

I'd love to visit your garden Alva, it sounds like a slice of paradise.

I honestly cannot imagine where I would be without my garden.

When my partner and I went looking for a home in S.F. we made a list of "must haves".
For me a garden. For him a garage.
And I wanted most of all a neglected secret garden, abandoned for years and wanting. And full of neglected, once-loved plants.

He got his garage.
I got my garden. Full of secrets --overtaken by beautiful raspberries and nasturtiums. FULL of secrets right down to a medicine bottle (building was built in 1870). I have it still in a mobile I have made, a wind chime sort of thing. So I can PROVE it.

Over the last 2-plus decades I have brought this garden to glory every year, full of jungles of blooms from foxglove to just about anything you can imagine.

Now 81 I am on the downside of this. I will soon leave this secret garden to another. May she search also for "the secrets". Or may HE.
I am no longer planting.
I am keeping it trimmed out daily, walking through a jungle of cineraria, California poppy, fushia, salvia and Mexican sage. Plants I cannot identify nor pronounce.

There's a new fig tree that has grown to a big tree, and two brugmansias, one avocado from a seed I planted and I am extraordinarily proud.
A tiny lemon (meyer) now a lemon tree very pretty with lemon flower sweet. I put the fruits of it on the street when I have given to neighbors. Jake next door returned it as preserved fruit and it is a marvel.

What a joy this garden is to me. The bees, the birds, the robin who comes each year. The birdbath. The hummers I feed when their beloved sage gives up for the year.
Through how many personal illnesses, crises for family has it kept me sane? For I would never have maintained sanity without my hands in the dirt. I have faced down cancer in this garden (my own) and mental and physical illness for all my family.

In the yard in back of me two shelties bicker with every foster dog of outs. And jasmine pouring over the fence. Two ancient Oaks, unusual for our city live there.
To the right a cottage and an ancient apple, a peach that gets peach curl every season. But produces finally peaches that do not taste like cardboard.

I live in a city, but grew up a farm girl, a country girl. And I could not survive without growing things around me. What a marvel this world of growing things, the skunks who live under the cottage to the right, the raccoons who visit over the fence, the rat I battle lest he kill my lemon tree (There's a pepper spray I can highly recommend).

There are things I love. Gardening is somewhere WAY at the top.
And AC figures here, each and every day for this 81 year old.
It is get up around 7 a.m., turn on the coffee pot, let the foster dog out into the yard for her a.m. ablutions, pour in the cream and watch the coffee go all carmel-color. Then look see what the questions are on AC.
Here I have found a community that is somewhat akin to flowers in a garden. EACH is DIVERSE and different from the other. And that is to say they cannot be judged as to beauty.

Welcome to my garden (s)_

Later, after a shower, it is out to check the garden. Not before checking the Blood pressure for the day, of course.

Life, if you stay somehow connected with the earth, can be good. Even in hard times. If you can study the rose, look at the clouds.................................
Just saying.
Gardening has saved my soul, if soul I have to save.
I wish for you only today to LOOK at what is growing outside your doorstep. LOOK at it.

There is somewhere in a book by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (The Yearling) a quote about what happens to us when we lose touch with the earth. I have it somewhere. I can search it out. But the truth is that it isn't good. We must get our hand in the dirt. It is, has been, always will be, for me--salvation. And when I cannot get to that good loam, then please let me re-enter it and nourish what is to come.

Thanks, Golden.

Plumbago is fairly hardy so I’m thinking it will survive but may not bloom this season.

Gosh, sounds like your gardener destroyed your plant and created more problems than help for you.

I just read about Virginia creeper. Wow, fast growing plant! Looks pretty too. I wonder if that grows in our area. I will have to check.

Our old gardener was terrific but he had a stroke and isn’t able to return to work so we have this new guy.

He apologized for chopping down my plumbago and said that he would be more careful in the future.

cw - years ago in my childhood in Ontario the forget-me-nots were crazy wild. I hauled them out by the handful regularly. Echinacea are nice. Being in the frozen north i am not familiar with ginger.

need - Aaargh!!! hope your plumbago grows back soon. Once a zealous garden helper slashed the main stem of a Virginia creeper I had growing all over the side of the house and over the roof of the front porch. It slowly died and I had a heck of a job pulling it down, and cutting it up for disposal.

We hired someone to trim all of our Asian jasmine ground cover and they also cut down my plumbago!

It’s growing back but it may not bloom this season.

I've been out this morning moving plants and dealing with two bullies of my garden, european wild ginger and purple coneflower. I do love them both but why can't they stay where they belong!!

My son is in Texas, his gf would walk around taking pictures of dead plants and put them on Instagram, I hope you all have a better summer this year. It looked awful. It was my son's first time experiencing the worst heat he ever felt, was quite the shocker, being born a New Yorker

Are summer hear wasn't much better, we got all the rain you guys got none. We had some difficult days dealing with the air quality from Canadas fires

We have seen hummingbirds here starting last week - I was able to get a lot of stuff in the ground and in pots in early March. Nearly everything that needs care had died while I was caregiving up in north Texas. My husband did keep my potted plumerias and some coleus pots alive, but that was it, it was a summer of high temps and little rain. I have watered and watered some of the spots where stuff has lived for decades - some are making a reluctant appearance after nearly two months of watering.

I ran into some hardcore gardeners at the local Ace Hardware and found out that everyone lost their Mona Lavender giant pots last summer, except one gardener who buried her pots in the ground. The conclusion was that the pots themselves were keeping the roots too warm.

I heard the hummingbirds are on there way to my area, and to get the feeders ready. ☺️

It makes me so happy to see all the birds visiting my naturalized garden, this morning there is a big flock of sparrows - a mix of chipping, white crowned and white-throated - and now there is a pretty goldfinch that's already showing his bright yellow summer feathers.

Anxiety,

I agree that marigolds are super easy to grow. Lantana is too. It practically takes care of itself!

I love all of the colors. They are so pretty.

Red, yellow and some white tulips.
The zinnias, are just seedlings starting, we can't put much outside for a few more weeks here.. I like the zinas , cuz I can cut them put them inside, or give them to someone that needs a pick me up. I love sunflowers, also have some teddy bear sunflowers, never planted them before so will see. Marigolds, are just so darn easy to grow and a good filller

Anxiety,

I usually see hummingbirds in my backyard. I love them. I am amazed at how fast their tiny wings can flutter in mid air!

Zinnias are so vivid and bright. What color tulips and zinnias do you have?

When my daughter was driving back home from Denver she said that she saw fields of gorgeous sunflowers in Kansas.

Needs, I heard the hummingbirds are on there way north, and to get the feeders ready. Are they down your way ?

Nice on the peppers, I got some zinas, and sunflowers, under heat lamps. And marigolds

Anxiety,

Tulips 🌷 are so pretty! I love watching birds and butterflies in my yard. The squirrels are fun to watch also.

My peppers are growing. I’m hoping they will produce lots of bell peppers 🫑! I want to plant green onions soon too.

My tulips are out 🤗, and I have a family of cardinals some place close by. Mommy and daddy are taking there turns on the feeder

cw,

My brother is going to plant lettuce too. He’s doing great with his hydroponic garden.

He has a beautiful aquarium with fish in it. He bought another tank to do his gardening.

I am jealous of his success! My green peppers are growing but at a much slower rate.

Hydroponic systems are fascinating but they mostly seem to be much too complicated/scientific for me, but I do have ambitions to try to grow some lettuce with a DIY Kratky system someday.

I’m growing peppers in a pot in my backyard. Well, my brother decided to grow peppers in an aquarium in his house. He already has peppers on his plants!

I know nothing about growing vegetables in water. Supposedly, they grow three times faster in water. He also has herbs planted in his aquarium. No fish in this aquarium, just plants!

I got my indoor grow light out and set up yesterday, and got a bunch of flower seeds. 🤗 Makes me happy to play in dirt again.

I just bought a new Christmas cactus. My only other one is from a cutting I took from one my son had, mine lived and his is now dead. My mother always had them, I so remember her putting hers in a closet every fall when she wanted them to bloom. The darkness always brought on so many blooms.