why garden?

For­give this long let­ter; I don’t have time to write a short one.
–George Bernard Shaw

Blotan­i­cal is ask­ing gar­den blog­gers to answer a sim­ple ques­tion this month: Why do I garden?

But there’s a catch: The answer has to be SMS-sized, 160 char­ac­ters or less! The brief answers are quick and easy to read. To write one is not.

Here’s my attempt:

I gar­den in order to glimpse nature’s processes and rhythms, because my gar­den takes care of me at least as much as I take care of it, and because all our gar­dens mat­ter more than we’ll ever know.

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PS: If you don’t know Blotan­i­cal, you should. It’s a great online com­mu­nity of inter­na­tional gar­den blog­gers that has recently sur­passed the thousand-blog mark. If you fig­ure sev­eral years of expe­ri­ence for most of the blog­gers, you could con­sider that the site gives you easy access to sev­eral thou­sand years of com­bined gar­den­ing experience–plus all the blog­gers’ great sto­ries! Gar­den­ers are the best peo­ple, and this site will prove it.

November 29 2008 05:02 am | Categories: gardening • quotes | Tags: •

9 Responses to “why garden?”

  1. Helen/patientgardener on 29 Nov 2008 at 6:54 am #

    I can really empathises with the sen­ti­ment in this post. It is what I was try­ing to say in mine.

  2. lostlandscape on 29 Nov 2008 at 7:19 am #

    Helen,
    Thanks for stop­ping by!
    It will be inter­est­ing to see all the com­ments gath­ered together in one place. There will be sim­i­lar threads going through them, I’m sure, but there are already emerg­ing inter­est­ing and sub­tle dif­fer­ences in the rea­sons I’ve read that will make me rethink my own rela­tion­ship to the garden.

  3. Midwest Mom on 30 Nov 2008 at 11:35 am #

    I like that you wrote “my gar­den takes care of me”…

    I feel the same.

    Thanks for the info on Blotan­i­cal, too. :)

  4. Philip on 12 Dec 2008 at 1:51 pm #

    I love your com­po­si­tion! That speaks to me.

  5. Philip on 12 Dec 2008 at 1:51 pm #

    Oh, and the quote by Shaw is brilliant!

  6. lostlandscape on 12 Dec 2008 at 4:00 pm #

    Philip,
    Isn’t it?! (the Shaw, I mean!) Every­one I know has heard it from me at least once. The quest for that which is dis­tilled to per­fec­tion: per­fect length, per­fect proportions…it’s the essence of art. (And thanks for the kind words on my lit­tle state­ment. I think how­ever that the topic deserves a much longer treat­ment from all of us.)

  7. Sue on 23 Dec 2008 at 4:17 pm #

    Con­grat­u­la­tions on win­ning the com­pe­ti­tion! I enjoyed read­ing your post.

    Sue

  8. Sue on 23 Dec 2008 at 4:35 pm #

    I need to apol­o­gize for being so scat­ter­brained. I thought the list was in order of the win­ners, so now I have to go back to the oth­ers I con­grat­u­lated and explain what I was think­ing. I had not read the part where he drew numbers.

    Well, I liked your post, anyway.

  9. lostlandscape on 23 Dec 2008 at 5:04 pm #

    No prob­lem, Sue! I liked all the responses. Every­one has such great rea­sons to garden!

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