A World of My Own Creation

I’m here. After weeks of anxiety and paperwork, I’ve made it. My weekend off. With all of the work I’ve been doing, I haven’t been able to relax in a long time. My dreams have been plagued with nightmares of forms that I forgot to fill out and coworkers who I don’t think I can deal with for a single minute longer. It feels like forever since I’ve been able to do something I actually want to do, but here I am on a lovely Saturday morning, waking up because I want to. 

The air this morning is perfect, crisp, cold, and clean. I could sit on my porch for hours in weather like this. It feels warm enough that I don’t need a jacket but cold enough that I’m not sweating from sitting directly in the large patch of sunlight on my porch. I woke up before daybreak to see the sunrise but ended up coming outside after it had already happened because I accidentally dropped the first mug of tea I made and ended up having to make another. So I sit, in my favorite rocking chair, with my second favorite mug, and bask in the early light of the morning as the steam rises slowly before dissipating into the air. 

When all of my tea has been relocated to my stomach, and I can feel the gentle warmth of it heating my core I rise from my comfortable position and retreat to the comfort of my home. The silence of a weekend morning is one of my favorite sensations. Everything feels so still and peaceful that for a moment I consider just sitting in my living room for the rest of the day, daydreaming. But I have plans so I go to my room and change into my casual jeans, a nice flowy blouse, and my beat-up old gardening hat. Its wide straw brim is frayed and drooping from overuse and a significant portion of the top is just one big hole, but I love it just the same. With my power suit on, I am ready for combat.

Outside, all my gardening tools are laid out and ready for use in my handy dandy tool kit which still sits on the back porch where I left it the last time I used it. I take a moment to breathe in the fresh air that surrounds me and I close my eyes to take in the glorious calm that flows through me. I open my eyes to take in my pride and joy, the thing that has taken me years to cultivate, my most precious possession, my garden. It stretches before me, a double lot full of greenery, vegetables, and a whole host of other plants that I could talk about for ages if given the chance. It is beautiful. So many shades of green overlap and blend into each other to create a tapestry of life. Some plants have begun to wilt and only a few flowers still have blooms but I know that new plants will take the place of those that are dying. It is the circle of life.

I walk to the center of my garden where I placed a wooden bench that overlooks my paradise. There I kneel before the flower beds of my garden. In this early fall weather, the once vibrant blooms of the summer flowers have wilted and died leaving me with the job of replanting. A lone tulip stands proudly before me. Among all of the dead or dying petals, it is majestic, a fiery orange against the sea of brown and green. I look at it fondly imagining it as a fire, lighting my face with its lovely glow. The flower is strong, without a wilted leaf in sight, so I decide to use it as a centerpiece for my dining room. Their season is over, but the vegetable season is just beginning. I need to get my vegetables in quickly, at least 90 days before the first frost. 

In my tool kit are several seed packets filled with a variety of different vegetables. I pride myself on being able to sustain myself mostly on my own produce. I considered getting chickens once but realized they would likely just destroy my garden and take up a lot of my gardening time. I need every bit of free time I have to properly take care of this garden. Its expansive nature and seasonal temperament make it challenging to keep up, but I enjoy the challenge. 

Slipping on my brown rubber gloves, I turn my attention to the weeds popping up among the wilted flower patch. I grab each one by its base before carefully working it out of the dirt. The soil is cool and crumbly against my gloved hands and a nice earthy smell rises with each weed I pull. With the ones whose roots don’t come out with their stems, I apply a different tactic. Using my trowel, I dig the roots out before shaking them to get the excess dirt off. Each pulled plant is thrown onto the brick path which runs through the garden almost like a maze. By the time I have pulled out every weed, I can see there is a mountain of roots and dead leaves surrounding me on the path. My knees ache slightly from kneeling on the hard path and I remember the gardening knee pad I had seen at the store when I bought the vegetable seeds last month. At the time it had seemed unnecessary and a waste of money, now I wish I had bought it. 

By this time the sun has fully risen and the day is slightly warmer. It’s not the kind of warm that would have me fanning myself from heat, it’s more of a pleasant warmth in which I don’t feel overly uncomfortable wearing jeans and a long sleeve blouse. I like the shadow that my gardening hat casts in the daylight. With all its holes and fraying edges, it looks a bit like a child’s shadow puppet monster. I laugh a bit at the image my mind has conjured with that thought: Hatzilla, the great terror. Smiling from my joke I prepare myself for my least favorite part of the planting process: digging the holes. Although it’s less digging and more just poking into the dirt with your fingers again and again before finally getting to drop in the seeds. 

I sweep the plant scraps from my weeding into one giant pile rather than the many large piles they had been in. I take a few minutes to do this, not stopping until I’m satisfied that my pile looks tidy, but not so tidy that it looks like I worked to make it look tidy. I realize that this was just a way for me to put off digging the holes, but still, I take the extra time to place the fire-colored tulip carefully on top. I shake myself and clap my hands together. Clouds of dust rain down off of my gloves and I begin the slow, boring process of poking holes in the ground. The repetitive nature of the process leaves me almost in a trance, even after I finish I still find my hand dipping toward the ground in an attempt to form one last hole. 

Now comes the fun part: the seeds. I like plants with bigger seeds like Brussel sprouts. They look like tiny brown marbles, plus they taste great when fully grown and sauteed in a buttery pan. Every holiday season I make my famous brussel sprout casserole, although I don’t really share it with anyone. I live alone and I don’t have many close relationships. I guess it’s only famous to me. I don’t mind my lack of companions. If anything it lets me focus more on me and my hobbies, like gardening. 

Each seed packet has a different vegetable. The first seed packet I grab is the beet seeds. The seeds themselves are fairly unremarkable. They look like tiny dried out cauliflowers, but once they’re fully grown they will look magnificent and taste even better. I put a couple of seeds into each hole up and down the lines until I reach the ⅓ point. This ensures that the strongest vegetable survives to adulthood meaning I will have the best possible beets come winter. After the beets, I move on to my spring onions. Second only to my brussel sprout casserole, my leek soup is one of the culinary masterpieces of the world. I’m sure that if Gordon Ramsay got a taste he would add it to his menu on the spot. Next, I plant my Brussel sprouts. I love the way their tiny round seeds roll about in my hand. They shake around in their packet making a nice backdrop for my work. 

After planting I fill in the holes and spray my garden down with a hose. In the dusk light, the water droplets glow like diamonds hidden in a beautiful lush jungle. I don’t notice how late it is until I look up at the cloudless sky and notice the first rays of orange streaking across the sky forming a painting I never want to look away from. Taking my gardening hat from atop my head I feel accomplished and alive in a world of my own creation and as I stare up at the multicolored sky I am calm and I am happy.