We've done a garden in our backyard during the past few summers, but this winter/early spring is the first time I've been anticipating it. It feels a bit like an emotional investment, or emotional outlet, or something like that, in a way that it never has before, and in a way that I need with our current family life.
My anticipation for the gardening season has led me to not only list out the type and number of plants that I want in the garden this year, but I've also measured the exact square footage of the backyard, plotted out where I want the garden to be this year, and even used hand-drawn graph paper to start mapping out exactly how much will fit where. Well, I actually did two versions of this, just in case we haven't made progress with leveling the yard like we're hoping to.
I think part of this near-obsession stems from my life feeling a bit claustrophobic right now. I think that we're in large part past the most intense adjustment period with the boys, but even though we're able to get out as a family and participate in life in fairly normal ways, the fog that has been the last year of our family's life has left me not knowing really what I like to do by myself. Doing anything by myself or for myself beyond exercising hasn't been much of an option up till now. And when faced with pinpointing things that I love to do and would like to start doing again, I feel kind of panicky when I realize that I no longer know what I like to do. And then I panic because I really do want to have personal interests and hobbies, and if I can't think of any, perhaps being a mother of three with a hard year behind me has leached out my individuality and replaced it with someone who is less "me" and more of "someone's mom".
Another probable cause is that a garden is a whole lot simpler to take care of than children are, and the results are a whole lot more immediate. Plant, water, weed, let it do it's thing, and in a few months you have the desired results. As tedious as I always thought a garden was, plants mostly do their thing by themselves, and compared to the timeline of raising kids, a garden is practically a cakewalk. Last summer I could count on the garden to be reliable when not much else in our lives were, and I would just pray as I watered the garden that we were somehow making as much progress in attachment and all the adjustment that was going on in our family as I was in keeping the plants growing.
Now, a few months later, I can see that there really has been progress, but there's still so much to do. We're tired. And the progress we hope we're making each day usually isn't visible for quite a while. Instead of being able to see the immediate results of yanking a weed so that plants can grow, the weeds are deeply rooted in our children and can't be so easily pulled. Instead, we have to try to give them the love and attention they need so that they can move past the challenges they are currently dealing with.
And so I'm looking forward to planting a garden, where I can have a place to put a little of my energy toward something that can show immediate results to help balance out the longer-term emotional investments I'm putting into my kids.
