gardening

While I was away in sometimes-snowy Colorado, springtime came to Georgia. I drove back into my new neighborhood and thought for a moment I was on the wrong street – trees that had loomed leafless overhead had blossomed into a sweeping green canopy, connecting yard after yard in cozy shade. Daffodils had given way to azaleas, bursting with color -- sparkling white and pretty in pink. After a light rainfall, the air smelled sweeter than any perfume ever bottled. It was a scent from my childhood, from endless hours playing outside this time of year, among the flowers, trees and persistent pollen of the South.

Clearly, it was time to plant a garden.

Sharm and I chiseled up a small section in the backyard by hand – a reasonable size for a first time attempt at tomatoes, peppers and herbs. I spent long afternoons adding bag after bag of rich soil and cow poop, raking it methodically. I crawled around picking out stray sprigs of grass and random rocks. Then I raked some more.

As I lingered outside, a tangle of vines near the shed would catch my eye, and hours later that entire side of the fence would be cleared. The front flower beds, which covered about half the yard, were disheveled and needed pine straw. Twenty bushels later, carefully spread inch by inch, they looked lovely. After days of filthy clothes, itchy arms and an achy body, I realized that I had become addicted – but to what?

Sure, I was procrastinating writing a bit, but that’s nothing new (and I’m working on that perpetual character flaw, slowly), but it wasn’t until afterward that I realized what was happening… As much as I’d sweated and toiled and blared my ipod in my ears, at the end of the day when I collapsed after a refreshing shower, I was truly relaxed; my mind was serene. It struck me as ironic that for years, I’d go home from a relatively silent office plagued by lingering noisy thoughts of [unimportant] drama.

But by working outside, making things grow and be pretty, and spending entire days using my physical strength, I somehow cultivated my own quiet creativity. At the end of the day I would scribble down all the story and project epiphanies I’d had while I covered in garden soil, far from a keyboard, yet listening to my heart. Even now, many miles from my plot of earth, I still feel texture of work gloves on my hands and the gentle Georgia breeze on face... and smile.

In recent days as I’ve been abroad again, meeting people and talking about what I’m doing now, I have simultaneously said and profoundly realized the change in me since moving = I’m free. Seriously. My body feels lighter (and I think it is!) and my only persistent worry is that the squirrels will pillage the garden before I get home. For the past three years my constant fretting was almost entirely related to work trivialities, and I had no idea just how much mental and emotional energy I was expending until that thankless vacuum was simply… gone.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll remain forever grateful for that opportunity and the many wonderful people I met, but wow – am I carefree now or what?! It’s liberating, this whole “working for myself” thing, and I’m going to give it (and gardening) my best shot. Maybe I will end up back at a desk again one day, wrestling to keep my creativity from stagnating, but I think amid the dirt digging and manure shoveling, I  tapped into a cathartic process to nurture and quiet my creative soul in years to come… and it's right there in my own backyard...