Doesn't gardening make you feel good?

I do love to garden—just love to move the soil about, plant the youngsters, care for them and watch them grow. I’m fortunate that I’ve had properties that have supported different types of garden areas. At present, I’m in the country, and the deer and other wildlife devour most things I plant, so I’ve had to do much of my current gardening in pots that I can place on a deck, etc. I think the satisfaction of nurturing something, much like parenting, provides the satisfaction. And plants usually don’t talk back!

It makes me feel jolly, like I’m doing something good not only for myself but also doing good in the world. It makes me feel domestic and content. It makes me feel like singing!

Deep as soil, lovely as flowers, love worms, love… yes, slugs too. Love gardening. Hey @picante – could your wild munchers be persuaded to look decorative or contribute manure to your garden? I live in a suburban/rural part of Cornwall, not much wildlife, but am gardening for bees and insects, quite successfully. Love the variety of life in my garden. Love it!

I love gardening!!! I have so much going on in my yard right now, it’s so fun! I love having fresh herbs for cooking too. My bell peppers are doing well. Today I planted a new avocado tree.

No, but it makes my thumbs green,.

I love planting things and seeing the outcome they produce… Gardening with veggies gives you such a wonderful delious product to enjoy with your family. Its also a great learning tool for my daughter to know where the food comes from and I find she loves trying the veggies she has helped to grow.

@auntydeb, my wild munchers include (but are not limited to): white-tailed deer; raccoons, armadillos, squirrels, wild turkeys, wild boar, mountain lions, birds of every persuasion, and insects the likes of which you’ve never seen (Google “giant red-headed centipede” and “dobsonfly” to get my drift). We’re in a multi-year severe drought, so the critters are much more agressive than during periods of normal rainful. I adore the critters (except the big bugs), and we respect each other’s space. They contribute manure with great regularity (all puns intended), and I try to stay out of their way. It’s a beautiful life.

@picante – love that beautiful life! The biggest critters we get in this neck of the woods are grey squirrels and the odd hedgehog. But, love ‘em all. Gardening is only getting involved with what’s there already!

@marinelife – I live in Cornwall, the south-westernmost part of the UK, it’d be interesting if jellies could say where they garden – so many differences in what we grow or love, or look at!

Yes! I love it!!

I wonder how people consider it work. I guess it’s work when it’s not your own garden, or if you’re doing it wrong.

I was just talking to @tinyfaery about this the other day. It is therapeutic, I swear.

I love it!!

Yup. I start in the volunteer garden next week!

I garden in Western Maryland, which is a little warmer than Cornwall.

No. I love gardens and planting but no maintaining.

I like it better when it’s going well! I think my sweet peas have caught some kind of blight, it got too hot and my lettuce all went to seed, and my herbs aren’t growing as well as I’d like them to be. Tomatoes are coming in nicely, though.

@nikipedia Peas don’t like the heat and neither do lettuce, I would suggest planting them in a shady area to so it would be cooler and let them last longer

@nikipedia What’s wrong with your herbs? Are they getting enough sun?

@marinelife, I think I haven’t been diligent enough in watering them. We had a couple lightly rainy mornings and I thought that would be enough, but when I went out there yesterday they looked so sad!

No, I hate gardening. I hate the dirty fingernails, the sore back from bending over, the plants that insist on dying as soon as they peek their heads out of the ground, the cat shit that ends up in my garden, and by the way, in random bare patches in my lawn as well, the hot sun making me dizzy, having to go outside and water the darn plants, seeing them get beat to the ground by the heavy rain and hail, or the random vandal that passes by from time to time. I hate gardening.

@YARNLADY – don’t blame you, I’m just a glutton for punishment. The fingernail thing… I just keep ‘em short and scrub a lot. Can’t help it. I even rescued my baby plants after they ‘got beat to the ground’, in my dressing gown as I couldn’t leave them… sigh…

I think people who don’t like gardening should just grow perennials. Only need to dig and such once, then it’s just watering and mulching.

@incendiary_dan Tell that to my poor geraniums that are currently lying all over the ground after that fierce rain/hail storm we had last week, a few days after I spent hours on end planting them, and two days in bed for the pain in my back and knees. I see a few stems and several leaves that survived, so maybe I will actually have a geranium garden lining my picket fence, some day.

Yes, it’s simply awesome.

Unfortunately not. It makes me sneeze…

aw, @YARNLADY – do you use Arnica for the aches and pains? It sounds to me as if you are actually quite a gardener… but the elements haven’t been your friend. Hope the stems and leaves do survive…

@auntydeb No, I just use a lot of rest, it works fine. Thanks for the suggestion.