It’s Spring here in NorCal. It’s one of my favorite seasons…now don’t be nitpicky… I know I said Autumn, what with the name of the blog and all that, but spring makes me happy too. The new beginnings, even though they are accompanied by sneezes and red eyes and a runny nose, just bring a spring (pun very much intended) to my steps. And I start planning my garden.
Ok, so it’s not much of a garden. When we bought this house, many, many years ago, it was landscaped in the usual cookie cutter manner with a big lawn in the front and back and wide borders all along the sides. It was a time of transition for our nuclear family, we had just moved from Michigan and were so looking forward to take advantage of the more than 300 days of sun promised in California.
My parents-in-law were visiting from India and they went gung-ho that summer, planting zucchini, peppers, tomatoes, mint…mint!, anywhere and everywhere they could see a brown patch. Unfortunately for them, we were all trying to settle in a very new to us place and were oh so busy with establishing daily routines at work and school and in the community. So the garden died a slow death once they left to go back to India. That autumn, we covered the borders with wood mulch. It was hard work, but we managed to do it over a week with ample ‘help’ from our middle and elementary school going daughters.
The wood mulch lasted maybe a year. When it came time to refresh it, my husband, in his infinite wisdom, decided to cover all the borders with the black and white river rock. And I went along with the plan because I was just overwhelmed with a new job, my daughters school stuff, and managing a household. In those days, I don’t think I ventured into my backyard even for 10-15 minutes in a week, let alone a day.
I was also not very interested in gardening. I was not interested in taking care of any other living being apart from my family, so no pets, in spite of all the puppy faces made by my then five year old, and no plants, in spite of my father-in-law’s gentle but insistent requests to grow mint, chilly peppers, lemon, mango!, mustard, fenugreek, etc, etc, etc.
The other reason, apart from having no desire to take on more responsibility, was that I killed every plant I got. I couldn’t even keep a lucky bamboo alive, so how would I get a lemon tree to flourish in my yard??
Fast forward to 2012, we had a houseguest who got me a lucky bamboo as a hostess gift. This was the year my older daughter went to college, and I was feeling sort of…empty? Even though my younger daughter was still at home, my work was cut down by almost 50% and I was spending all of that time playing scrabble on the iPad. I was becoming more and more sedentary and lethargic.
So I looked at the lucky bamboo and promised myself that if it lived 6 months at least, I would get another plant. Then I transitioned from Scrabble to haunting garden web forums (anyone remember those?) where everyone from newbies to the experienced gardeners exchanged information on growing every vegetable and fruit and flower known to mankind.
My lucky bamboo survived and I bought myself a jasmine – Maid of Orleans – and surprise! That survived too! So I started. Since I couldn’t plant anything in the garden borders, I started buying pots from Costco, Miracle-Gro potting soil from Lowe’s, and plants from Green Acres Nursery. The first few plants were Columbine, Fuchsia gardenmeister, Salvia Black and Blue, and a few other varieties of Salvia. The motivation was to attract hummingbirds and butterflies to my porch and garden.
And then approx. 3 years into it, I started journalling about my efforts in the garden. I finally bought the huge plastic wine barrels and started planting tomatoes, zucchini, cucumber, and eggplant. I have a Dwarf Meyer lemon tree, which is stingy with its fruit so far, and a Washington navel orange tree, which gave us the sweetest, freshest oranges last year.
I planted Freesia bulbs. Last July was the first time I took out all the bulbs and placed them in the garage for the summer and replanted them in November to get masses of them this March.
Last July was also the first time I started a compost bin, which went through phases of being too wet or too dry, but everything composted, and yes, the smell sometimes is…good. So that will be this year’s mulch. I also planted Red Clover as cover crop in the barrels, which will eventually be planted with summer vegetables.
Learning to play in my garden, which is basically a hodgepodge of pots of different sizes and materials, has given me happiness. It will never feature in Better Homes and Gardens, but it is the one place where I am the Queen of my Queendom!!
This morning I was listening to a podcast on happiness and they quoted a study saying that one of the ways to be happier was to spend some time in nature. Nature is defined as a forest, a park, a house plant, or even a screensaver on your computer or phone.
There are also some studies stating that certain bacteria in the soil – Mycobacterium vaccae can trigger serotonin, the happy mood chemical, and it can reduce stress.
So how does my garden make me happy? Let me count the ways:
- I am outside, enjoying the beautiful sun (with SPF30 on, definitely). It’s the whole atmosphere which just cannot be packaged – the sun, the fresh morning air, the chirping of the birds, the colors – even just the shades of green. It’s a burst of flavour for all the senses.
- NEAT – Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. I am particular about some form of exercise – usually a 40 min. walk everyday – but I noticed that I was spending the rest of the time pretty much on the couch reading or watching T.V. NEAT is the energy we expend for everything we do apart from sleeping, eating, and exercising. So apart from the walk, I was not really energetic in any way, which was leading to some, well, quite a bit of weight gain. When I garden, the different actions I do – carrying bags of soil, moving the containers, watering the plants, just going to my garden 20 times a day in the spring to see what’s coming up through the soil and in the summer to see what’s ripening – all that helps me move more and increase my NEAT which keeps me healthy.
- It keeps me busy…in a good way. An idle mind is truly the devil’s workshop. This way my mind is busy planning and preparing for the upcoming season and remembering all the lessons learnt from the past seasons. I browse the garden store aisles looking for the perfect containers and the perfect flowers to grow this season. And then I journal everything with hearts and smiley faces for the wins and sad faces for the losses. The garden journal is a source of great fun for my daughters who can’t read my scribbles and find it weird that I even keep one.
- It’s a great topic of conversation. Just say “I want to grow tomatoes” to anyone in a garden store or even the checkout line of a grocery store and stand back and hear the stories of the varieties of tomatoes and the triumphs and the losses! So it leads to connecting with others, even if for a few minutes, and that leads to a pleasant day.
Happiness to me is a combination of having a purpose in life, bigger than a daily job, feeling connected, having a healthy body, being able to move easily, and being creative. Gardening gives me all this and more.
Do you garden? Does it make you happy? What do you think?
