As I walk outside the sunbeams hit my face both warming me up and making me extremely happy. Today feels like it is finally the first day of summer. With the 70 degree weather I just can’t get outside fast enough. I put on some gardening clothes and head out into my yard to help with the planting. Each year my family and I add new plants to our yard between Mothers Day and Memorial Day. This year we added a new bed along the back of the house filled with transplanted hostas, an addition to a previous bed of more hostas, bluestar, and phlox, and finally a small bed of plants native to Ohio such as Bicknell’s Sedge, Tall Larkspur, Tall Boneset, Blazing Star, Meadow Evening Primrose, Wild Petunia, and Ohio Spiderwort. It feels great to get down and dirty in the earth. I can feel the coarse dirt through my gardening gloves, especially through the hole in one of my fingers. I work diligently and quietly in a mood of reflection. Gardening can really be peaceful and therapeutic.
This year it struck me how amazing gardening truly is. With just minimal effort and basic care you can create life. With flowers that attract pollinators you can help spread life through that process as well. By bringing native plants back into an area you are rebuilding the natural ecosystem of a state or area. It just proves that humans have both the power to destroy and the power to create. Most of the time we are destroying the environment around us but with gardening we are giving life back to the planet even just a bit at a time. By planting new plants we are looking forward to the future just like planting a tree without ever getting to see the tree fully grown. As Audrey Hepburn once said “To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.”
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