Self-sustaining, mostly

From left to right: Zucchini and Cube of Butter squash, beefsteak tomatoes, and red and yellow onions.

Gardening. More specifically, vegetable gardening. This is one of my passions:

preparing a plot of earth, pulling weeds, amending soil with compost and fertilizer, planting vegetable seeds, watering the bare earth, waiting for small green shoots to appear, watching those little spouts grow and flower and bear fruit, harvesting the bounty for consumption and doing this over and over again.

I haven’t gotten tired of doing this for over 25 years.

There is a peace that I find when I’m in the garden, tending to the plants, removing the plants I didn’t plant (weeds, we call those), watching a small flower bloom, waiting for the small fruit to become what it becomes.

I do love to garden, to dig in the warm, rich soil, to check on the progress of my efforts.

I enjoy the sense of control when I enter a garden overgrown with weeds, and the satisfaction of removing the weeds, leaving only the plants I wish to nurture. From chaos to harmony, just pulling the plants I didn’t want there in the first place. I also enjoy the quiet time spent pulling those weeds, achieving a semi-meditative state. Methodical, ordered, control.

Gardening brings me closer to nature, to my inner self.