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Topsoil therapy
When our kids were much younger and dependent upon LOML and me for meals and a roof over their heads, I discovered the serenity of gardening. (Don’t even think of doing a drive-by to see what a gardener’s garden looks like these days.) I’m not now, and never have been, very good at gardening or lavishing attention on plants. But while I am out-of-doors, digging around in the dirt and pulling weeds and relocating perennials, I am alone with myself. No kid of mine ever wanted to pull weeds or divide the irises if there happened to an Ollie to conquer or a baseball to be batted around. Being in the garden was, and still is, my kind of therapy. The only thing I have to worry about is the plants. Whether they thrived or wilted, my sole responsibility was to those plants. I didn’t have to worry about a peony outgrowing three pairs of runners in one season. I didn’t have to think about where the money would come from to buy a new washing machine, and I didn’t have to think about “who was doing what, with which and to whom”. It seems I’m not alone in reaping the benefits of type of agri-therapy. My mom was known to spend hours in the family garden on Sunset Trail. If we approached to ask “who, what, where, when or why”, she’d smile and ask us if we were looking for something to do. Of course, we knew she meant we could help with the weeding, and not one of us needed her kind of zen if forts needed to be built or ponds needed to be fished and waded into or bicycles were waiting to be ridden someplace. Mom was a smart woman.
As my siblings and I grew older, and became responsible for our own households, I noticed that some of us took up gardening as a way to relax and become peaceful. Of course we didn’t buy into the obvious, and some of us even believed we gardened to produce produce. You know, seeds go in, watering happens, vegetables and fruits are picked. Personally I’ve never had a very respectable food garden, and it wasn’t from lack of trying. One of my siblings has turned his yard into an oasis of lush, weed-free, green grass surrounded by beautifully flowering borders. He’s dabbling in fruit growing and has excelled at tomatoes. I’m not sure what’s on his garden menu this year, but he’s obviously become invested in the meditative, and delicious quality of tending food plants. I, however, haven’t spent as much time in my garden this year and it shows. I’m tense and restless. I don’t sleep as well as I used to, and I know gardening lowers stress levels and in some way is physically beneficial to me. Yet I’ve allowed my yard to take on a wild and unkempt feeling and look this season. My yard looks like how I feel, by times. Wild, messy, annoying and unproductive. Those of you who do tend a garden, you know the activity decreases your stress levels and calms your nerves. Apparently there is a link between cortisol reduction and getting your hands full of mulch, bone meal and topsoil, but it is a mysterious link at best. I imagine—not being a horticultural therapist and all, just seeing how you can change a landscape must have something to do with the rehabilitative and rejuvenating effects of gardening.
Today, I’m wondering why gardening isn’t on the curriculum for students in our public schools. It’s a well-known fact, students who are involved in agriculture/horticulture learn how to better problem solve, they are more productive in other areas of learning and much more engaged in conversation and life lessons. Being responsible for plants requires wisdom and maturity. Gardening allows students to become thoughtful about process and production. Gardening might be the answer to some of the aggressive and harmful behaviours we learn as young people. As the late Audrey Hepburn put it, “To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.”
Okay, where’s the wheelbarrow and green bin?
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