Last spring, I moved into an old house with a small backyard. The previous owners left garden beds that were overgrown with weeds. I planned to just cover everything with wood chips, but my mom said on the phone, “You could try growing something.”
I bought tomato seeds and a few pots, planted them, and watered them. About a week later, a few thin green shoots pushed through the soil. I crouched there for a while, feeling pleasantly surprised.
But when the seedlings grew to finger height, the leaves turned yellow, and they didn’t make it. Next, I tried lettuce. The leaves ended up full of holes from caterpillars. That whole summer, nothing I grew turned out perfect. The tomato plant grew three tomatoes, and a bird pecked half of one. The lettuce was bitter and tough.
The strange thing was, I didn’t feel all that disappointed. Every morning I went out to water, crouched down to look for new sprouts, pulled a few weeds. Twenty minutes would pass without me noticing. The things that usually made me anxious—work emails, bills, sleepless nights. I couldn’t sleep—all seemed to fade during those twenty minutes.
In the fall, I pulled out the dead vines and sprinkled some spinach seeds. At dinner, I picked a few tender leaves and dropped them into my soup. They tasted better than anything from the grocery store.
I still don’t really know what I’m doing. But I’ve learned that those few minutes every day with my hands in the dirt calm me down more than anything else. When my hands are covered in soil, my head isn’t filled with noise.
