Garden Glory

I had a great Mother's Day. I spent it with my family doing the two things that I enjoy the most, knitting and gardening. These days I seem to love any pursuit that has a kind of built in zen element to it - I guess you'd call them 'meditative' activities. When I'm knitting a lace scarf (and not listening to a podcast at the same time), I'm zoning out of the here and now and tuning into my needles. It's the same with the garden. My focus becomes the plants, their position in the soil, the quality of the soil itself in fact.......... Then a strange thing happens. I feel peaceful.

Communing with nature soothes my soul much like knitting does. These are also the elements that I love about yoga and Tai Chi. Not that I'm about to stretch into Downward Dog while I'm planting potatoes ofcourse, gardening is enough of a workout in itself, but the sense of calm that I feel after my green-fingered pursuits is just the same.

I also love to repurpose items for the garden. A couple of years ago our old mail box was replaced with a smart new one with a key. Not wanting to get rid of what was to me (a foreigner used to a hole in her front door for the letters to go through) an example of American culture and future antique, I repurposed it as a planter. I painted a Norwegian design on the front and planted it up with flowers the first year; this year it's strawberries.

Over the weekend I got my seedlings all planted up. I'd been hardening them off all week, so I was ready to begin the big plant out. I even managed to swap a few for some broccoli and cucumber starts, so now I've got a whole host of stuff to try to maintain this year. Thankfully the young kids in the neighbourhood find it all very exciting and were on hand to water everything in after I had planted it up last night. My Little Guy was proud as punch to be back to watering the veggies again. Let's hope his enthusiasm doesn't wane before the season's out!