Have you ever tried to find a way to de-stress, only to have it not work (or you just stopped trying)? That’s happened to me countless times.
The cycle is as follows:
- Get stressed
- Ignore the stress
- Become burnt out
- Find a destress technique
- Stress about destressing
- 🙂
Thankfully, I have found a way for me to destress — gardening!
What makes gardening so different for me?
Well, I’ve always done some form of gardening since I was a little girl. My mother maintains a well manicured garden in both her front and back yard, but she has never been one to grow any kind of produce. Each summer, I help her plant her haul from a greenhouse, and her garden always looks so wonderful! Large trees, blooming flowers, decorative grasses, statues, bird baths and feeders. When I lived back home, I kept a few Valentine’s Day orchids from my Dad to my Mom alive and blooming inside, which was my first real taste of gardening for myself (my parents never really cared to have anything besides vases of flowers inside the house, which would inevitably die in a few weeks).
When I moved out with my brother, one requirement was that we get a place with a nice balcony! Said balcony is quite long, so fortunately I have the space to have my garden outside. My brother and I have our own parts of the garden; he takes care of the decorative flowers and grasses, and I take care of the veggies, fruits, and herbs. So far, I have two Sungold tomato plants, green chili peppers, Habanero chili peppers, a whole planter of sweet potatoes, chives, green onions, sweet basil, as well as Thai basil.
Why not other hobbies?
It might seem a bit silly, since I feel like each time I would “destress” through yoga, journaling, etc, it felt like a strange race to stop being stressed (that is probably just me though). Gardening isn’t a “fast” hobby to take part in. There is a lot of waiting and watching involved.
I like the routine of having different watering and feeding schedules for more delicate, finicky plants indoors, and being able to watch as the vegetation on my balcony sprouted out from the soil, reaching towards the sun and really begin to develop!
Better yet, I could harvest from my own balcony the fruits of my labour. Cooking, marinading, garnishing with a few simple and fresh ingredients from my little garden! It has also been nice to be able to share with my friends and family, too.
I have found that the act of gardening is pretty relaxing. The ability to physically see the progress of individual plants as well as the garden as a whole is a kind of reward I wasn’t getting or seeing with other hobbies/relaxation techniques.
I really recommend trying out gardening if you have the patience for it! Especially if you are like me and prefer to see some sort of physical progress.
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