My Neutral, My High, and My Low of Last Growing Season
Image description: A sunflower is standing tall with all of the petals closed as it is yet to have bloomed.
Every few months I send out a newsletter that includes reflective questions for my readers and I post my own answers to some of the questions as a blog post.
Questions - Identify 3 experiences that occurred last growing season that you would describe as a “neutral moment” “high moment” and “low moment.” How did each moment impact you?
Neutral moment: For years I was gardening on my buildings roof. For years no one knew about it. Then, suddenly everyone knew and I was given a warning (okay, I was given 2 warnings because they caught me growing again a few months later). When my landlord told me I had to move all my plants from the roof I was devastated. Gardening was the one thing that helped me to get out (and stay out) of bed every day. I felt the pressure of the city closing in on me. I didn’t think I would be able to grow anything that summer, but luckily the community garden nearby had membership openings and I was able to get in (it was a lottery system). I felt neutral about this. On one hand I was happy to continue growing food and herbs. On the other hand, I am not a fan of gardening in such a public space. With my auditory sensitivities, chronic fatigue, and ADHD, gardening around people felt like more time having to mask (AKA, cover up my neurodivergent and disability traits). Another thing - gardening in public also meant being subjected to the male gaze…will discuss more about this in another blog post sometime.
Low moment: have auditory sensitivity, which means that I am sensitive to noise. Not any noise, though. I welcome noises that feels soothing. Soothing noise glides into my ears and evenly coats my brain without any nags along the way. Birds chirping, bees humming, water dripping, plants dancing - all soothing noises. Last growing season I struggled to ignore irritating noises that surrounded my community garden. Half of the garden is surrounded by apartment buildings, with people’s windows facing into the garden. The other half is next to the belt parkway highway. Every day I would wake up and set the intention to connect to myself through the land at the garden. Every day I left frustrated as if someone shoved sandpaper into my ears so deep that it rubbed against my temporal lobes. I would have headaches that would pulsate to car engines and become hyperaware of people’s conversations around me. The thought of having to wear earbuds with how sensitive my ears are to touch, or headphones, with how sweaty they make the ears, was dreadful. I researched noise cancelling headphones anyways (this was my millionth time researching them). As usual, I struggled to choose headphones for weeks. My indecisiveness, decision fatigue, limited executive functioning skills, and overall anxiety kept stopping me from purchasing and kept pushing me to research. Eventually I ordered headphones in NOVEMBER. They are currently on backorder till February, so I guess I’ll review them soon. Sigh.
High moment: My love for sunflowers grew. This was my first time gardening in a community garden, so I wasn’t sure what plants were going to spring up in my garden bed. Sunflowers, along with lavender, and friendly chickweed came through the soil. I fell in love with so many things - how tight the sunflower petals clenched onto the middle of the flower before it bloomed, the ombre effect of those petals, the grand size of the leaves that provided shade to the plants below, and the seeds! The seeds! Watching them grow throughout the season brought such joy - when I finally passed my fingers over them, plucking them out of where they grew from - I couldn’t help but smile the entire time. So many seeds in each flower…every time I harvest a plant with an abundance of seeds, I am reminded that they are whispering (or shouting) “more, more, grow more of us.”