Why do you love to garden?

There is nothing more delicious and prideful than eating (and sharing) a tomato and basil salad made with ingredients you personally nurtured.

I haven’t yet had a chance to garden full scale, but that is one of my life goals – to have a farm with all sorts of produce and animals. I’ve been able to do some small-scale backyard gardening though, including retrofitting my non-garden backyard to a gardening one. I take pride in being able to produce food, and knowing that I know how to nurture and support plants so that they grow most effectively and with the biggest bounties. Plus, as a chef, there’s nothing better than using the freshest, most loved ingredients.

There is also a sensuality about getting one’s hands dirty. It is a seasonal miracle to me that I can poke a seed, a cutting, a bulb, a smushed cherry tomato into the soil, and have them turn into beauty, aroma and nourishment. Every year I plant a huge pot on my deck with tomatoes and basil. All that’s missing is a mozarella tree and a vinaigrette fountain.

And I would like to again thank my sister, down the road, for letting me loot her huge veggie and berry garden.

For me, it is like therapy. There is a simplicity to it that is a cure for the stress of the day.

Until I discover leafrollers on the cannas – then it is war!

There are two kinds of people in the world, those that like to get their hands dirty, and those that don’t. I garden because there is a great satisfaction in it. Flowers, fruits, or vegetables, it doesn’t matter. I grow things because the biggest waste of a yard is something known as a lawn. I can’t see growing a large area of grass unless I have herbivores grazing on it. Since I can’t keep livestock in town, I grow stuff that gives me pleasure, and sometimes, food to eat. If that makes me green, then I was green decades before it was popular.

It’s a productive use of time. You put the time in, you get the product, and it appeals more to our primal sense because it’s a concrete thing, food, so different from a symbolic paycheck.

It’s a way of nurturing something weak, and seeing it through to completion. It pays you back, so there’s a clear reward. It’s using the brain and hands to win through challenges and overcome obstacles. The satisfaction is real.

Plus, the stuff I grow is waaaaay better than what you can buy in a supermarket. As a person who appreciates flavor, I dig (heh! dig!) that I get to have Really Good Food for much less money. I get to share with my friends, even, and they tell me how good it is and how amazing I am to be able to make food out of dirt.

But I don’t make food out of dirt. I just help dirt become food.

I love spending time outdoors and keeping myself busy. Gardening is very calming to me. Unless it’s 90 degrees out and I have a huge amount of weeds to pull.

There is nothing better than being able to walk to your backyard, pick a fresh strawberry, and eat it right there. It saves us a lot of money too. We grow tons of tomatoes, bell peppers and green onions. We also grow oregano, basil and cilantro. Homemade salsa is so good!

Watching the flowers grow is also very calming. I love to sit outside and just look at all the plants and think about how beautiful they will be once they mature in size.

One of the best ways I have found of diffusing anger is weeding or pruning. While ripping some reluctant weed out of the ground, I sometimes call them by the name of whoever I am angry at.

I also love the ease of growing fresh herbs and the amazing difference they make in cooking.

In the past, I have taken great joy from cultivating native wildflowers, but in Florida I have not. Gardening is topsy turvy here.

contribution to the environment through Composting and Air the planted plant produces.