Speaking as Captain Obvious for a moment, I haven’t been having a whole lot of luck keeping up with my resolution. I’ve been working on a different post that I’d wanted to put up back in January, but it’s been a bit of a monster to work through, and it recently got harder. It’s also yet another dive into the land of depression, and I’ve been wanting to try and make sure there are some happier posts or posts that actually relate to gardening going up every now and then. So, while my other post is still under construction, I thought I’d try to write a shorter, cheerier post.

Like I think I said in my New Year’s post, I haven’t really had much of a garden over the last couple months. I’d been growing my indoor herbs in my kitchen (admittedly taking over the kitchen table in the process), and when the holidays rolled through, we had to clear them out to a different room. The only room available for housing plants right now, other than the kitchen, is one in the back of the house that I don’t tend to spend much time in. The phrase “out of sight, out of mind” became painfully relevant to my garden, and as a result, the vast majority of my plants died between Thanksgiving and Christmas. There was one plant that actually flourished from the neglect, though; everything in the AeroGarden I have died from a lack of water except for the one pod that hadn’t had much luck with sprouting – rosemary. It’s actually doing really well, especially when I continue to mostly ignore it. Still, having to throw out the dead, dried out remains of most of my other plants was a bit soul crushing. I’ll admit I have a tendency to get slightly over-attached to my plants.

With spring just around the corner, I’m looking forward to overhauling the beds in our front yard and resuming my project from the summer to start a bed in our back yard as well. I’ve got a couple seed-starter greenhouse trays, and I’ll own up to my lack of patience; I set them up and planted a bunch of seeds yesterday. Of course, patience was worn away by a painful and stressful week. My family and I learned on Tuesday that a close family member has a degenerative form of dementia. We’d thought she was coming out of an extremely deep depression and we were going to have her back again, but it turns out we’re never really going to get her back. Yesterday morning and early afternoon was filled with phone calls to her close friends to let them know and phone calls amongst our immediate family to start making a care plan for her. Pretty much every call led to its own round of crying.

So I started my seed-starter greenhouses earlier than I probably should have. I went into the back room and unloaded a bag of seedling mix into my two trays and planted herbs for the back garden and flowers for the front bed, trying to find comfort in getting dirt under my nails while I kept trying to choke back tears as a few of the phone calls drifted back from the living room… not necessarily the happy, hopeful start that I’d envisioned for my new garden (or this post), but hey – I started gardening to help me through things like this. Kinda makes sense that this would spur me into planting several of my herbs and flowers a couple weeks early.

And it did help; pouring and evening out the dirt in the different cells, sprinkling seeds that came in a diversity of sizes and shapes that surprised me, and watching the dirt slowly absorb the water and even out – it gave me something else to focus on; something else to do with my hands; something new and hopeful, while I tried to hold myself together and process the conversations I was hearing, and the reality that I’m going to be losing someone near and dear to me as I watch her slowly lose herself, piece by piece. Not only will we be losing her in a drawn out, almost cruel manner, we’ll also be watching her go through the pain of feeling herself slip away and losing more and more of her independence.

It didn’t keep me from crying, or having to stop and recollect myself every now and then, but I know how much worse that experience would have been if I hadn’t gone to work on my garden. Yesterday afternoon would’ve had me curled up on the couch, crying a lot harder than I did and unable to stop. Working in my garden helped me feel my pain without drowning in it, and I think that’s really at the heart of why I find it therapeutic.

I did say that I was hoping to write a happier post, though, and so far I don’t think I’ve held to that. I’m not sure I’m really holding to “short” either, but that’s an entirely separate point. Before the events of the last couple days caused me to rewrite a decent chunk of this, I was excited about what I was planning on growing this spring. The excitement is still there, even if it’s a bit buried by the anxiety and grief accompanying recent developments.

I’ve really enjoyed growing herbs, especially the ones I frequently use in my food. Adding that extra layer of functionality to the things I grow has been incredibly satisfying. Recently, I found a book on making homemade bath & body products using several herbs that you can grow at home (for anyone interested in the book, it’s rather aptly called The Herbal Bath & Body Book by Heather Lee Houdek; it’s aimed at people who are new to herbalism) and now I’ve expanded my list of herbs that I’m going to be growing this year.

In addition to the herbs that are a staple for me at this point – genovese basil, oregano, & thyme – I’m going to try some of the herbs that were frequently used in the recipes in the book. I’ve planted chamomile, peppermint, lavender, rosemary, borage, and lemon balm in my seedling greenhouses. I’m hoping to add some more down the line, but I think this is a pretty good starting point. If things go well and I’m feeling ambitious, I might try to get some rose bushes too.

I’m also hoping to bring the flower beds in our front yard back to life this spring. They’ve got the potential to be filled with color and vibrance, but most years they just stay covered with the leaves that fell on them during the Fall. This year, I’m planning on changing that. Alongside the chamomile in the second seedling tray, I’ve got lupine, snapdragon, foxglove, and butterfly flowers planted, and I’ve got calla lily bulbs ready for me to plant them in something a smidge larger than the cells of the seedling trays. I also have my eye on some pollinator seeds to try and attract more bees, butterflies, and possibly a couple hummingbirds. I’ve always wanted to be able to look out the window or sit on the porch and see the colorful flit of hummingbirds darting around. Hopefully, I’ll have some bee balm, echinacea, and milkweed seeds coming in soon for the bees and butterflies, and if memory serves, foxglove, lupine, and snapdragons all tend to be pretty attractive to hummingbirds.

All in all, I’m looking forward to setting up my garden this summer, and I’m excited about the seeds I’ve got sitting under little plastic greenhouse lids. It may not eliminate or prevent the shitty and painful parts of life, but gardening gives me things to look forward to and enjoy. Working in the dirt quite literally grounds me, and I’m grateful taking up this hobby occurred to me when it did so that I have it to lean on now.