Gardening | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

On Breaking the 22 Minute Mile, and Stumbling on Happiness

When I was 12 years old, I read Roger Bannister’s account of breaking the 4 minute mile, pushing himself to the outer limits of human possibility, “collapsing almost unconscious, like an exploded light bulb”. I was inspired–and astonished. Run a mile in four minutes. The thought of it still baffles me!

I walked a mile yesterday, sweat-drenched, heart pounding, lungs aching. My app Runkeeper, informed me that it was my fastest ever. 21 minutes, 15 seconds.

I had broken the 22 minute mile.

And I felt unreasonably happy. I have never been fit, and, after colon cancer surgery, was walking a mile in 33 minutes, then 30, then 26 minutes with pride, 25 minutes with incredulity, a 24 minute mile with dizzy joy.

* * *

George Malkmus’s God’s Way to your Ultimate Health inspired me to decline chemotherapy after Stage III colon cancer to instead strive for super-nutrition to boost my immune system (so as to combat any remaining cancer cells). Malkmus recommends a practice which he says will change your life, and may even save it: Walk a mile as fast as you can, record the speed; continue trying to walk faster until you can walk 1 mile in 15 minutes; then 2 miles in 30 minutes; 3 miles in 45 minutes, and finally 4 miles in 60 minutes.

So here I am shooting for a 15 minute mile, beating my speed most days by a few seconds. My 16 year old Irene speed-walks a mile in 11 minutes. Why should I be happy about walking a 21 minute mile?

Because it is my personal best; because I have worked for it; because I have got better. So much better

That’s one secret of happiness. Let your trajectory bring your joy. In my twenties, I read 60 meaty books a year (and was sad that I was not reading more.) This year, I have read substantially less than that, but instead of allowing it to be a source of deep sadness , I am happy because I am reading more than I did last year.

Take joy in the arc of your improvement—an easy secret of happiness.

* * *

When my husband Roy took early retirement in 2010, I wanted him to make all my garden dreams come true. Promptly. I wanted him to construct a waterfall, an artificial stream, a herb garden for starters. But he thought he should make us some money.

We had entered a new phase of our lives, with him working from home, and me trying to write. So we wisely sought counsel.

I sadly told the counsellor the garden dreams of my teeming brain, and he, in turn, told us a fable.

“There was once a man whose dream since youth was to be a millionaire. But the years passed, and middle age passed, and it seemed his dream would remain a dream.

Saddened, he thought, “Well, I have always wanted to be a millionaire, and now the end draws nigh, and it looks as if I am to be disappointed. What should I do?”

And then he thought, “Perhaps I could have a little of the millionaire lifestyle? Is there anything a millionaire has that I could have?”

And then he thought: “I bet millionaires change their razor-blades every day. And I can afford to change mine. So while I cannot be a real millionaire, I can be like a millionaire when it comes to razor blades. I can be a razor blade millionaire.”

Silly little story, I know, but I am adopting that way of thinking.

* * *

My garden is huge for England, for anywhere. One and a half acre. I have so many garden dreams. I want edible hedges, an edible lawn and edible inter-planted flower beds. I want to grow all my own fruit and vegetables. A bog garden? A larger rock/alpine garden? Oh, and I want to spend no more than an hour a day doing this, and two hours on Sunday.

We’ve lived in our home for ten years, and in the early years, I was sad at the mismatch between my garden dreams and my garden reality. Frustrated, disappointed and overwhelmed, I would stop gardening for months at a time, and my garden became a shaggy overgrown Sleeping Beauty garden.

It’s still a bit shaggy, let me confess, but what I do now is take joy in each herb, each fruit tree, each little flower that opens, each little bird that sings, admire its beauty. Many of my garden dreams may come to pass; others might not. They may be too wild, impractical, time-consuming or expensive. But I will enjoy my garden such as it is, even though I have planted less than a tenth of what I want to.

* * *

Creativity, creativity… I have so many stories and ideas which I have not yet written down. My writing career, if I have one, will not resemble the one I dreamed of.

But… but… but… creativity is its own reward. The joy of creating things, of making beautiful things, is its own reward. And so I am grateful for what I do write, even if it is in no way as plentiful or as beautiful as I hoped for. I am grateful for those who read.

Happiness partly lies in making peace with the life we have, rejoicing in its beauty. Happiness lies in thanking God for the silver lining in all things.

Today is the day the Lord has made; I will rejoice and be glad in it: I often tell myself that. This is the life, the marriage, the work, the garden God has given me, and they are all good. And I will rejoice and be glad in them.

* * *

Happiness to me has become the minimum requisite as I go through my day. I often do a spot-check and ask myself, “So Anita, are you feeling happy?” And when the answer is no, it’s often because circumstances, or people, or my writing are not behaving the way I want them to.

But then I think, “Not being happy, that’s nonsense. There is so much good in the very people who are annoying me. There’s so much good in my world—a loving husband and loving children; a large dream house; a large dream garden (in its size and blank canvas-ness); a labradoodle!; health (phew, yes, unexpectedly); friends; work I love, books to read, the time and ability to travel, enough income to be happy; so many interests to make me happy: art, film, architecture, literature, nature, gardening. And I live in a beautiful old God-breathed world full of fascinating history, beauty, culture, good people. I will choose to dwell on beauty. I will choose to be happy.** And because I am naturally sanguine, thank goodness, even in the process of giving myself this pep talk, I become happy again.

* * *

I have a friend who is uncannily like me. He delighted in running faster and faster, beating his personal bests. When his knees went, and he could no longer run, he delighted in walking further and further. As middle age hit, and he maxed out on the distance he could walk in his available time, he bought a treadmill, set it on incline, and walks ever-steeper “hills.”

Ah, I too enjoy quantifying my life. It adds fun to it.

But what happens when we age, and can no longer walk faster, grow stronger, break records in our own personal Olympics? When strength fails, and one can no longer write more words or read more books in a year? What then?

* * *

Well, I thought, when I can no longer crunch personal bests in all my endeavours, I will take joy in the Lord. I will enjoy his goodness, the world he has made, and his love for me. I will enjoy the ever-changing canvas of the skies, the subtle and glorious change of the seasons. I will think of Jesus, and I will enjoy Jesus. I will meditate on scripture, those wonderful words; I will enjoy Scripture. I will enjoy God. I will be happy. Yes, I will be happy.

And then I thought…all these lovely ways in which I intend to find happiness when I am old, and can no longer walk faster, read faster, write faster; when I am totally amused and at peace with my own unimpressiveness—you know what? I can do them right now.

All those ways in which I plan to be happy when I am aged, I will be happy today while I am middle-aged.

Yes, starting today.

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Gratitude for the silver lining in all things is the ultimate secret of happiness. NEW from @anitamathias1

How gardening fills my life with hope. And secret garden conversations with God

By Anita Mathias

View of my garden from our bedroom window

I more or less decided to buy our house, after seeing pictures of it online: it had 9 of the 10 things I was praying for. And one of these was a massive garden.

Much to my husband’s annoyance, when we viewed the house, I asked to see the garden first. I fell fast in love, and then only showed (and felt) a cursory interest in the house. The realtor never had an easier sale!

The house I could change–as I have (putting in huge windows in the kitchen and Zoe’s room; building a new 30 sq. m conservatory; knocking down walls between the kitchen and utility room, creating one big sunny room) but the garden!! What luck to find a 1.5 acre garden in Oxford!

I grew up with a one acre garden surrounding our house, a mass of fruit trees, vegetables, and flowers, so many flowers. We gave everyone bouquets, and could not spot the loss.

But when I bought this house and garden what I had overlooked was that we had a gardener who lived on the premises. We also had a live-in maid and a live-in cook, who all helped in that intensively planted garden. My mother spent hours there, dead-heading, grafting, pruning, gathering bouquets of flowers for the house.

The largest garden I had personally worked in was our half acre garden in Williamsburg, which we intensively planted, and which always got the better of us, and earned us frowns from our neighbours, and occasional letters from the home-owner’s association!

* * *

Hosta corner

So….we bought our house 9 summers ago, and the dream garden. But it has always overwhelmed me. England is a gardener’s paradise—the soil is fertile, but it does not have Virginia’s scorching summers or freezing winters, nor deer who feast on hostas and roses.

But we’ve done relatively little compared to the size of the garden. I get overwhelmed when everything turns muddy in winter, or feral in the summer. Then the grass in the orchard grows taller than my children; Queen Anne’s lace and cowslips take over; and I work in the garden more and more infrequently, since it makes me feel cross with myself, and with Roy for letting it go.

* * *

I was exploring these feelings with a therapist as we were exploring ways to have a more balanced life. (Blogs tend to colonize!).

I feel a bit manic in my garden, I confessed. My mind races on to the next project—I want a second greenhouse, a four season one; a patio, since we removed ours for a conservatory; more fruit trees, lots of flower beds, and to replace the grass with perennial vegetables and flowers and fruit bushes. I want to convert my garden to a permaculture garden.

I used to get cross, and stressed about imperfections—weeds, plants that need pruning, and shaggy hedges.

“Why don’t you just thank God for the beauty you do have?” she suggested. “Just praise him in and for your garden.”

And so, slowly, I began gardening peacefully, seeing the beauty I have rather then the beauty I do not have. Looking at and praising each beloved plant, rather than hankering for the perfect combination and arrangement of plants. (Well, most of the time. When I see a perfect garden, I hanker!)

* * *

Being in the garden is a mystical experience for me: the sounds of the wind and birdsong, the fragrance of buddleia, and fresh-cut grass, the earth on my fingers which triggers the release of serotonin in my brain, flowers in their Solomonic glory, the taste of just-picked cherries, strawberries or asparagus.

And gardening fills my life with hope.

We’ve planted 45 hostas this year. I am looking forward to seeing them larger and luxuriant next summer, and then dividing them, as well as the other 20 hostas we have. And dividing our hellebores, and heuchera. Basically getting free plants, my gleeful soul claps. And buying new perennials. And planting more fruit trees (we have apples, cherries, mulberries, pears, plums, quinces, medlars, figs, grapes and hazelnuts which came with the orchard attached to the property). Yeah, I am still driven, (let me say purpose-driven and sound a bit more spiritual)

I feel my garden is anchoring me to the earth, filling my life with hope and anticipation. My garden is a deep joy in the centre of my life.

* * *

I know the only sure foundation for hope is the goodness of God, and the love of God.

But the hope my garden gives me, and the optimism it fills me with is somehow tied up with my faith in a good God–and so shall I shall rejoice in autumn’s blazing palette, winter’s austere one, spring’s rainbowed one, and all the mature and variegated greens of summer.

* * *

Beans

We have 10 raised vegetables bed in our vegetable garden, and grow our own asparagus, courgettes (zucchini), beans, tomatoes, pumpkins, potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, strawberries, and armfuls of herbs.

I garden using Ruth Stout’s No Work Gardening method, using thick mulchs of grass clippings, garden shreddings, and shredded paper, so that there is no need for weeding, the soul is never exposed, and there is a minimal need for watering.

We shred all waste paper in our paper shredders (£35 each), and I have bought a £149 wood chipper to turn all overgrown shrubbery and hedges and volunteer plants into mulch. When I run out, Roy cuts the grass, and prunes, then chips the prunings. It’s a closed eco-system, all waste becoming soil.

Roy sometimes just wants to go and buy £20 bags of mulch rather than make our own with the wood-chipper, but I think it’s more cost-effective in terms of money and time to just convert all garden waste and untidiness to mulch rather than haul it to the compost heaps, where twigs and branches which can take years to break down.

I chat to God, explaining the financial and practical brilliance of my plan, and explaining to him why he should definitely endorse my ideas, and not Roy’s. (“Thus said the Lord:” it’s a great trump card!!)

* * *

The clay soil is dry. I can see fissures. But underneath, life teems. There are hundreds of flower bulbs which will flower in season, guinea hen orchids and arum italicum which will delight us.

What is essential is invisible to the eye. For nothing is as it seems.

* * *

And there’s a niggle at the back of my mind. “Oh God, will I become the writer I want to be, the blogger I want to be?”

I ask God this question in the silence of my vegetable garden.

He asks me a question in return.

“Anita, will it be okay if you never become the blogger you want to be, the writer you so want to be?”

“Hmm,” I say, suspiciously. My heart beats faster. I sort of hyperventilate.

It is better not to give pat answers when the Lord God asks you a question, “What do you mean by okay?” I ask.

“Will you be okay? Will you still be happy? Will you and I be okay?”

I think a long time, and come back to him the next day, as I work in the vegetable garden.

“Yes, if I never become a successful blogger, I will be okay. And if I never become a successful writer, I will be okay.

“I will learn to thank you for what I do have as a writer, not what I don’t have. I will be happy about all the lovely things in this world so full of richness. My heart will still be full of joy, because you will pour your Holy Spirit into it. I will still be overflowing with thanksgiving.

And yes, of course, you and I will be okay.”

And he says, “Thank you. That’s all I wanted to know.”

* * *

And somehow the niggle most writers have at the back of their heads, the yearning for a crystal ball to tell them if they’ll make it or not just lifts.

I turn the worry about my writing over to him. It’s now his worry.

We will be okay, my Lord and I.

I rather wish he’d speak lovely prophetic words about my blog or my writing into the silence of my heart and garden, but he does not. He has spoken to me about them before, and God is as economical as the closed eco-system in my garden. What he has spoken before, he will not repeat, for he knows I have hidden it in my heart–though when I am tired, I often doubt it.

As Birds Sing Because They Must, Even So I Write

By Anita Mathias

As long as I have a garden to muck about in, and the health to do it, I shall not mind growing old. My garden is a deep joy at the centre of my life, even though I am making peace with not being able to keep up with it: it’s an acre and a half.

My nerves felt raw today, but then, I went out to the garden, which is bird-loud, and felt peace return.

Listening to birds sing, it’s suggested helps us relax, helps us complete tasks, and even think creatively. For instance, I didn’t have a single fresh idea for a blog post when I went out, and then, the garden gave me this!

* * *

Why do birds sing? Birds sing thousands of times through the day, the red-eyed vireo singing 20,000 songs daily. They sing to mark out their territories, to attract mates, or simply to communicate with other birds. They sing because it is their nature. They sing because they must.

Gerard Manley Hopkins imagines kingfishers catching fire, dragonflies drawing flame, while singing, “What I do is me. For that I came.”

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

* * *

I have at various points considered giving up writing—when I had a miscarriage when Zoe was two; when I was pregnant with Irene; when domestic chaos overwhelmed me.

But each time when I decided to do nothing but housework until our house was orderly—-the last attempt was 7 years ago– I slipped into depression. It was hard to get out of bed, hard to focus on the sorting, organizing, dishes, laundry, the endless domestic routines.

If, however, I gave myself just an hour or two of creating, I had energy for the rest. Because that is what I was made for: to write. And when I am not doing it, I am listless, slightly unhappy, and don’t have energy for anything else.

And so, each time I was tempted to give up writing to be a perfect homemaker, or a perfect mummy, I would return to writing, because it was my calling, my vocation.

* * *

As a bird sings its high, clear note, and as fish splash through the seas of this world, I am made to play with words and ideas, to attempt to recreate beauty out of beauty.

Writing time is slowly opening as I grow more disciplined. What will I write? How much? I don’t know.

But this I do know–as Milton puts it,

Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure even
To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven;
All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Taskmaster’s eye.

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Ora et Labora: How Physical Activity helps my Creative and Spiritual Life.

By Anita Mathias

I recently went off routine into a funk.

This had been my schedule: Wake, pray, and then read scripture, and blog about it, or whatever the Holy Spirit is bugging me about. This took about two and a quarter hours.

After which I did some housework and decluttering for an hour. Then gardened, another hour. Then a walk for over an hour, after which I settled down to literary writing, working on my memoir and a short story, until nightfall–with breaks for meals, and to hang out with Irene and Roy.

However, with this long mid-day break, my memoir and story was getting squeezed.

So I cut the gardening, cut the housework, reduced the walk.

* * *

And my life became hugely less satisfying. Turns out I needed the time tidying my house and getting rid of everything “not beautiful or useful.” I needed the hour in the garden. I needed my long walk.

These were times when I unconsciously process and come to terms with, or find solutions for, my life’s minor frustrations, just as the unconscious mind does when we sleep. These were times when ideas come, and when I pray, and when my vision jells for the next hours, days and weeks. They can even be times of revelation, of hearing and sensing God.

So cut all those blessed times in which I was a human being, and not a human doing; in which I was a body and spirit and emotion-full being, and not just a mind; cut those times to stretch, relax and move—and what happened?

* * *

Well, for a few days, I fell apart. [Read more…]

The Best Way to Develop Shiny New Habits

By Anita Mathias

Blogging almost daily for three and a half years has led to self-awareness. I have grown bored of boasting of my weaknesses.

There is a time for self-analysis, and a time for acting on that analysis, and that time came!

And so I am in the process of developing shiny new habits. These are not yet jelled, but the trajectory is looking good.

* * *

The best way I know to form new habits is the most boring, but the most certain.

Start where you are. [Read more…]

In Which I Invest in Mental Wealth

By Anita Mathias

So we had guests for lunch. It normally takes me just a few minutes to get myself presentable, but I was slowed down by my bedroom which was unusually messy: unmade bed, clothes books, manuscripts and make up strewn around. Looking at it made me stressed, and I realised that, when I entered it after lunch, to read in bed or nap, I’d immediately get stressed.

So though I hadn’t yet been down, having left the cleaning, cooking and tidying to Roy and girls, I decided to take ten minutes to tidy my room and invest in “mental wealth”. And that was all it took to get it tidy. A ten minute bridge between stress and peace.

John Bailey, in his biography of Iris Murdoch, says that that Iris picked up a book and started reading that moment she entered the house. That is one of the benefits of a decluttered house and life. Your mind is clear. You enter a room and begin reading.

* * *

Achieving or increasing monetary wealth does not particularly excite me. I am far more interested in mental wealth. Shalom, peace.

And so I am working on a massive decluttering project, trying to get rid of everything neither beautiful nor useful, so that each room exudes blessedness and peace ( just as my sleeping collie Jake does) rather than chatter and nag me, like a living To-Do list. For that’s what visual clutter does!

* * *

My other mental wealth practices: Gardening, which I enjoy, and which induces a euphoric change of state in me. It’s mainly a time for praise or prayer (interspersed sometimes with nagging Roy about undone tasks). I have let my garden (one and a half acre) go, so getting it pretty again is a challenge, but one I enjoy!

* * *

I never thought I would be typing this, but long walks (3-4 miles) also induce a euphoric “change of state.” I pulse with endorphins, I think clearly, I feel great. When I return to my laptop, I can write fast and for long hours, and happily. It’s a manifestation of the goodness of God isn’t it, that something so simple should bring so much joy?

* * *

Brene Brown in Daring Greatly says that our numbing activities (over-eating, over-work, screens, shopping) stem from our craving connection with our family and friends, an ache we misdiagnose. So when I feel restless, I spend more time with my family, or arrange to meet-up with a friend, and, yeah, that certainly builds up mental wealth.

* * *

Richard Foster suggests discovering prayer as a recreational activity. And perhaps it is the finest.

Prayer as relaxation. Just letting your thoughts unscroll as they will, and bringing them to God one by one. Presenting your random dreams, hopes and wishes to God, and chatting to him about them.

Or doing nothing at all, just waiting, and seeing what He might say. At times, I get restless and bored. At other times, I think it is the most interesting thing there is! Playing in the fields of the Lord!

Re-opening the Ancient Wells which will Save our Lives Right Now

By Anita Mathias

In arid ancient Israel, access to artesian wells made all the difference between prosperity, survival, or famine.

And so when God blessed Isaac so that his crops reaped a hundred-fold return (Gen. 26:12) and he became very wealthy, out of envy, his enemies, the Philistines “stopped up all the wells that Abraham had built, filling them with earth.”

Today, there are almost weekly accounts of the Israeli occupation forces destroying Palestinian wells, farms and orchards. Destroying wells, sources of life, is always a very effective enemy action, leaving aridity and poverty.

* * *

Barbara Brown Taylor popularised this question: What is saving your life, right now?

Prayer and scripture and communal worship is certainly part of it.

But other things are keeping me alive too: long, slow, contemplative walks out of doors with my beloved collie Jake, my body getting into a rhythm of movement, my mind relaxing, still as a pool, until I am no longer thinking, but just being, and then suddenly a golden carp of thought pops up, unexpected and welcome.

And travel, which is complete relaxation. My mind rests from conscious thought, planning, strategizing, worrying. I shrug off my to-do list, and my uneasy Puritan imperative of ambition and must-achieve. I am just am, and am purely happy and relaxed, wandering the streets of a beautifully preserved medieval town like Troyes, France, which we visited last week, just looking, or wandering aimlessly on the alpine meadows of Switzerland, to which we drove earlier this month.

Blogging is saving my life, in that it pushes me to think, to observe, to express, to strive for beauty.

* * *

But life has blocked up several life-giving wells for me, as for all of us.

And I am opening up these wells.

Before I married, I was a voracious reader. Reading was my escape from the world, and my greatest source of joy, and I felt I needed to be alone to really disappear into a book leaving the world behind me, and I found that hard while living with other people.

I have been steadily reading less through the 23 years of our marriage, though I have recently re-launched a reading recovery programme—reading 1 page more each day than I did the day before, aiming to hit 45 pages a day, or a book a week. Concurrently, as a back-up plan since I have many books on the go, I aim to finish each book in 1 day less–30 days for book 1; 29 days for book 2, etc. This plan gets anyone to reading a book a week in 23 months.

And with reading, I have lost other sources of joy. As a child, I loved myth and legend and fairy tales and children’s stories. Sadly, I have not read much in these genres as an adult, because, well, I was an adult and thought I should be reading serious, grown-up stuff.

It’s strange that I didn’t realize that children’s stories and fairy tales and myths and legends were invented by adults, who were putting themselves back in touch with the sources of joy and delight. And we can step there with them, if we give ourselves permission to.

On holiday earlier this month in Switzerland, Italy and France, it was as if God switched a switch on in my brain, and children’s stories poured out of me, two and three a day. And writing children fiction–ah bliss, gives me “permission” to read it.

* * *

Poetry was something else I loved to read as a child, and the first genre I wrote in as an adult. My masters in creative writing was in poetry.

But then, making the correct or incorrect assessment that I probably would not have a career as a poet, I gave it up in my late twenties. It is something else I would love to resume, first reading it exhaustively, then writing it.

* * *

Our large garden was a huge source of joy as a child. I have a large garden now, even larger than my childhood garden, but in fact, though I write looking at it, it is hard to recover the habit of working in it consistently.

I would like an extraordinary garden, and would love to make time to work in it every day, for an hour, like I used to. But I have made peace with the fact that when it comes to it, I prefer writing to gardening. So, since it is better to take just a few steps in the direction of one’s dreams than none at all—I am gardening just once every few days for now.

* * *

What will re-open the wells of life and joy for us?

Examine your life. See what you are doing out of duty and habit which is not life-giving for you. (Too much internet usage? On too many rotas at church? Staying up too late doing nothing much?)

Then begin to shoehorn joy into your life, starting small—in the smallest measurable increments, steadily rebuilding

What is saving your life now? Are there wells of joy which have closed for you? Tell us in the comments.

In Praise of Gardening

By Anita Mathias

(A hellebore from my garden on Easter Sunday last year)

Here’s a lyrical passage from Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Gardening provides rewards far beyond the vegetable paycheck. It gets a body outside for some part of every day to work the heart, lungs, and muscles you wouldn’t believe existed, providing a healthy balance to desk jobs that might otherwise render us chair potatoes. Instead of needing to drive to the gym, we walk up the hill to do pitchfork free weights, weed-pull yoga and Hoe Master.

It is also noiseless in the garden: phoneless, meditative, and beautiful. Nothing is more therapeutic than to walk up there and disappear into the yellow-green smell of the tomato rows for an hour. I inhale the oxygen of their thanks.

Like my friend, David, who meditates on Creation while cultivating, I feel lucky to do work that lets me listen to distant thunder and watch a nest of baby chickadees fledge from their hoe in the fencepost. Even the smallest backyard garden offers emotional rewards in the domain of the little miracle.

Every gardener I know is a junkie for the experience of being out there in the mud and fresh green growth.

Funny, gardening used to be a deep joy at the centre of my life when I lived in America. Gardening–even more than writing which then had anxiety and uncertainty and worry associated with it.

I have never really got into gardening in England. Part of it is that I moved from a good-sized plot in America—half an acre to a massive garden: 1.5 acre. In the US, I could look and tend everything I planted in an hour. Here, it’s not possible. Here, my garden feels overwhelming.

And England is more fertile than Virginia, and everything goes feral in spring and summer, and keeping up seems a forlorn hope.

And, so the garden has become more Roy’s than mine, and when I go out, I gulp. His idea of gardening is getting things to grow. Mine is getting things to grow, but a garden as pretty as a National Trust garden.

However, the real reason I have stopped gardening is that I don’t have a slot in my schedule for it. Leo Babuata of Zen Habits says that when it comes to forming a new habit, it’s important to find a trigger. Do it just before something. Something that reminds you that it is time to practice your new habit. I haven’t yet found a slot for gardening.

England’s going through a cold snap now, so I am going to tell myself that if I do it just once or twice a week, it will be better than not at all!