Photo by Jessica Walliser |
I’ve adopted a new gardening philosophy. It stems from all my friends who have become brand new gardeners in the last year or two.
This whole gardening thing is so exciting for them and, since I’ve been doing it professionally since I was 15, I have kind of forgotten how thrilling it can be to grow a garden.
My friends have sent me text messages about their first tomato harvest, emailed me pictures of their zucchini plants, posted images of their favorite flower on Facebook, shared with me a meal of their very first green beans, expressed smiles and frustrations over gigantic pumpkins and attack bunnies.
I’m feeling their excitement and sharing all those little gardening thrills I haven’t experienced in a long time.
It is so much fun to hear about someone’s first garden. You can feel the emotion in their voice; it’s almost as if their garden is a child and they are watching it grow and nurturing it with similar care. The discovery of this new diversion, and the pride that comes with it, is an amazing thing.
I’m so proud of my friends and hope that their ‘real’ children will become gardeners themselves, as I did after watching my mother garden and seeing how much pleasure she took in it.
So I have decided to stop taking my garden successes for granted and do a better job appreciating each and every cucumber I pick from the vine.
I’m also going to take the failures to heart a bit more. Over the years it has become ‘no big deal’ to watch a plant wither–there is always next year, right? Yes, I try not to repeat these failures, but I stopped getting fired up about it a long time ago.
I think I need to start questioning my failures more; that’s how I’ll continue to learn. Its how all gardeners do. Listening to my ‘new garden’ friends ask why something didn’t work, reminds me that I should be asking myself the same.
So, thanks to all the newbie gardeners in my life. You are an inspiration.
