|
About This Author
My name is Joy, and I love to write.
Why poetry, here? Because poetry uplifts its writer, and if she is lucky enough, her readers, too. Around us, so many objects abound to write about. Once a poet starts with a smallest, most trivial object, he shall discover that his pen will spill out what is most delicate or most majestic hidden inside him. Since the classics sometimes dealt with lofty subjects with a lofty language, a person with poetry in his soul may incline to emulate that. That is understandable. Poetry does that to a person: it enlarges the soul and gives it wings. Yet, to really soar, a poet needs to take off from the ground.
 
|
Daily Cascade #1110800 added March 16, 2026 at 4:07pm
Restrictions: None
The Glory of Gardening
Prompt:
“The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.”
Alfred Austin
Do you like gardening? How good are you with plant-care?
-------
I remember me a few decades ago, kneeling beside the earth, pressing seeds or shoots I've cut from the rose plants into soil, and covering them with a thin blanket of dirt, exactly around this time of the year. It was recommended, then and there, that we wait until after the third week of March for to put in new seeds and shoots. Yet, I couldn't wait. As soon as March marched in, I would put up some seeds and cover them with layers of plastic for warmth.
In many ways, what I did then was a rather quiet action, but in it lay something deeply satisfying for my spirit. This may be because gardening feeds the soul as effectively as its harvest feeds the family.
In those days, on LI. NY, I had a rose garden with 55 rose bushes and an adjacent large vegetable garden. Then, we had some huge trees in the front yard and part of the back. Also, there were seven apple and two pear trees, plus some other trees, bushes, and another half-acre of untouched land that we left for nature, and when I dared to step in that untouched part, I felt as if I was entering a mystic, religious temple of sorts. It was breathtaking.
In addition, that garden, the part I worked with, taught me. It taught me patience when patience wasn't my virtue. It taught me respect for life as if I was entering a quiet conversation with nature, especially after I was subjected to a busy life with work, cars, driving, obligations etc. Then, when in that garden, my mind was calmed by the act of pruning, watering, or simply sitting in the middle of the plants, enjoying the day, and learning my lessons of resilience.
In that garden, I felt the warmth of the sun, the smell of the earth, the sounds of the birds chirping and insects buzzing. I felt I belonged there more than I ever belonged anywhere else.
Gardening also taught me humility. I learned to take things when they happened and not try to force fate. This was when not every seed grew and not every bush or plant had a generous yield. Still, each new season was another chance to plant hope right there in the soil.
At this point in my life, in a much different climate, a lawn and garden company takes care of the land around the house, which its entire area is probably one tenth of the garden that once taught me patience, gratitude, hope, and a quiet kind of happiness. Right now, my gardening has been reduced to several flower-pots and three rose bushes on the raised beds in the front of the house. Still, I'm grateful for this, too, and for the lessons I have learned from nature itself, and from the quiet miracle of things that can grow from the simple soil.
|
© Copyright 2026 Joy (UN: joycag at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
Joy has granted InkSpot.Com, its affiliates and its syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work. |
