To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.
Audrey Hepburn, actress and humanitarian, famously said “to plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.” I find this to be inspirational, but it also contains a kernel of advice. Because if you want to believe in tomorrow, plant a garden. Or at least nurture a plant.
Grow some food for yourself.
Image credit thanks to Markus Spiske on Unsplash
One thing you might want to consider doing is to grow some food for yourself.
It could be a single tomato plant in a pot, a planter full of herbs, or more complicated such as a small raised or elevated bed, or a large garden plot.
I’m not suggesting you take up gardening just because “everyone is doing it”, although the idea of Victory Gardens have certainly increased in popularity this year. I suggest it because it might just help you feel a bit more stable and sturdy. A tad more resilient.
why gardening fills our basic needs
This year, more people are growing at least some of their own food, in part due to food insecurity caused by so many things flying off the shelves lately, in part caused by a desire to avoid the need to go to the grocery store quite as often, and in part (and I suspect this is a large part) because people felt shaky, and growing some of your own food provides a feeling of security, as well as getting you outside in nature, working in the dirt.
I’ve talked before about how being outside and working in the dirt can help lower anxiety, just as I’ve mentioned how our recent gardening impulses are probably due to us all toppling down toward the base of the pyramid that is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Even if you’ve never studied psychology, you may have run across Maslow’s pyramid before. The idea is that we need each level of the pyramid to be fairly stable, starting at the bottom, in order for the top levels to be supported. Our physiological needs—food, water, sleep, shelter, and so forth—have to be met first, then comes safety in the form of things such as personal security, health, and employment.
With COVID19 threatening everyone’s health and many people’s employment and safety, you can see how we all might want to shore up the next lower level (physiological needs) to be sure that it is rock solid. The same goes for our increased awareness following the murder of George Floyd: that things aren’t as safe as we thought. That our personal security might not be at the level we believed, when we see peaceful protestors subjected to tear gas outside a church in Lafayette Square (Washington, DC).
If we are back to the bottom of the pyramid, where we are worried about air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing and (possibly) reproduction, then it makes sense to do what we can to shore ourselves up.
Image credit thanks to Kenan Kitchen on Unsplash.
Think of it as an act of hope, and one of defiance
It is an act of hope and possibly even defiance to plant something new and help it grow right now, despite all the troubles that surround us. It shows hope because of course you expect to be here in the future to enjoy the fruits of what you you have planted (even if it is a vegetable). And it shows defiance because right now, so many things are telling us what we can’t do: can’t go back to our usual way of life due to COVID19, can’t remain blind to issues of racism, can’t always count on the police to have our backs (something that our black and brown sisters have known for ages), etc. But nature has a way of continuing on, of letting things grow in the cracks . . . and we can seize that for ourselves, and plant our own gardens.
My elevated bed
Morris built it for me, and it holds radishes, scallions, green bean plants, celery and herbs.
