25. Habit Forming Part 2

With every passing day of summer, I became more convinced that this gardening experiment will become a new way of life for me. The hard work no longer felt like a chore. Sure there were times when my schedule made getting the lawn mowed in a timely manner tricky, but really, I like mowing. So I figured out how to better manage my time and plan ahead to make it work.

I found gardening to be another beautiful companion activity to my writing and my yoga practice. The three activities complement each other well. When I’m not physically sitting at my laptop writing, ideas and turns of phrase I can use later float into my mind as I weed or water or hold a pose on my mat. I spent so many years in my head thinking and writing and stewing. It felt good to use my body to transform my green space and to do something that showed progress and also effectively cleared my head.

Oftentimes I come home from work a little fidgety. Not ready to dive into my yoga study or work on an essay, so rather than succumb to the agitation of what to do with myself, I changed clothes (or sometimes not) and walked straight to the backyard. I turned on the hose and began watering the flowers. I climbed the hill and weeded while the water ran giving the flowers a good soaking in anticipation of the forecast for hotter temps in coming days.

As I yanked out the green trash from the hill, I felt myself breathing easier, feeling a sense of accomplishment and letting go of the low-grade panic that stole peace from the present moment.

I daydreamed about how I could get a job that let me learn more about plants, flowers, and gardening in general whilst still having good benefits: retirement savings, health care, and tuition reimbursement.

Seems for the time being, this remains an amateur thing. Novice or not, it is more fulfilling than I could have imagined. This pastime has landed on my path at exactly the right time.