An Introspective Stress Bunny Running Wild in the Garden

I am pretty well reconciled to the fact that I'm an introspective stress bunny. It's just who I am, that's just how I roll. I wrestle with anxiety, and sometimes the anxiety wins. When there are decisions to be made or changes on the horizon, I hibernate, tuck myself into my little house, my little garden and my little world until it everything is settled or I get aggravated with myself, whichever comes first. I understand myself, mostly, and my husband gets it.

Sometimes it is hard to leave the house. I'm not even going to qualify that statement. It is what it is.

Having a garden helps, a lot. I love to sit on the porch among my crazy containers and look at the raised beds my sweetie put in for me, crowded with tomatoes, beans and okra. I plan. I dream. I try to calculate the precise number of tomato plants I need to grow in order to have enough to can spaghetti sauce, salsa, bbq sauce and ketchup for a year. I drink my coffee early in the morning and strategize for the day. (This week's coffee: Wolfgang Puck's Breakfast in Bed k-cup. It was an impulse buy at JC Penney and it is GOOD.)

Plants need tending. I can run wild in the garden, let the stress burn off. They grow if you take care of them. They need harvesting, need preserving, need replacing. A garden is a busy place, filled with small, productive chores. There are few things more satisfying in life than having a well-tended garden plot.

Gardening with children is a no-brainer. Informal science lessons abound in the process of gardening, they get to play in the dirt and, hey, free labor. Mr. Smarty Pants has a green thumb already at nine years old. After we ate strawberries in yogurt, we took a little time and I showed him how to plant the strawberry seeds in containers. After weeks of watering, harvesting and freezing peppers, he helped me pickle hot peppers over the weekend. He asks good questions, which keep me alert. Why does the boiling water canner create a vacuum? Why do we use vinegar? How do magnets work?

When I showed Mr. Smarty Pants how to save seed from bell peppers. I saw the lightbulb click on in his mind. He said, "We won't have to buy seeds, Mom." Bingo. We planted several in egg carton seed starters after transplanting the germinated tomato plants from last week. He eats bell peppers faster than we can grow them. He would bite into one like an apple if he could, every day.

We started potatoes in a plastic bin container and he giggled the whole time.

Nearly every project is a panic attack transformed into something productive. Keeping busy keeps me sane.

Aggravated? Pull weeds. Introspective? Thread your tomatoes through cages, try to create supportive trellises for peas without buying a fancy one. Feeling hopeless? Plan the next crops. Life carries on in a garden, season unto season, unchanging- a beautiful constant. Gardens reward patience, perseverance and diligence. Every flower or fruit is a pat-on-the-back. I don't understand people who don't love to see things growing around them, either children or cabbages. Both are equally complex and bring joy.

Gardening lets my inner stress bunny run wild and exhaust itself into normalcy.