Not just gardening.

One may see it simply as a way to get your food or as a way to relax and spend time with their families. For me, it was a tough graduation process.

Even though my mom was always into gardening, canning, chicken breeding etc., I was never really a part of it. Once, I helped my grandmother while we were visiting. She asked me to sew a row of carrots. In case you don’t know, uncoated carrot seeds look like this:

For a 9 year old, that was quite a challenge, so I had found a shortcut, that at the moment I thought was a more effective way of doing things. If you look at the second picture… well, that’s what my grandmother has harvested later in a season. Multiple seeds in one hole don’t do that well:

My serious gardening experience started 5 years ago. I went through a Mittleider growing method program. The method is basically how to grow a lot on a very little area. Then I continued in Michigan at Andrews University student garden. I was lucky to become a part of a CSA(community supported agriculture) and be a part of an organic certification process.

So, why graduation? Looking back, all of it was … a learning process. And not only learning how to grow food, but also it was learning patience, learning appreciation, learning team work, learning what real food tastes like. Seeing a seed germinating, putting out first leaves, first flowers, first fruit, checking every day for them to become ripe and to be the first to try it. I feel like you can almost make a zen/nirvana-search-type movie out of it. By the way, does that remind you of anything? If you are a teacher or a parent, then I’m sure it does. I can even say that gardening is like a mild form of parenting. Except that it requires less responsibility and vegetables can neither run around, nor yell. And I feel that in the same way children teach us to appreciate life, gardening can teach us to appreciate something as basic, though same time as crucial for our lives, as plants. Thanks to gardening I am a different person now.