The Garden that Heals

November 14, 2020

Saturdays can either be super active or really lazy. Today was lazy. Motivation has been rough lately. I had one task to do, that was to mail out something I sold on eBay. I was super motivated to do that so as not to risk a down mark on my profile from the buyer. As long as I made it to the post office that is opened before closing. 

I knew that it was a short drive so I added another task on to visit the community garden. It’s been months since I was there last and has been one of my new favorite places I’ve discovered in the past few months. It’s a garden with herbs, fruits, some vegetables, flowers, beehive and butterfly garden. It was designed to educate the community and kids about nature and gardening. One of the neat things is that they have a compost that the public can contribute to and the public is also allowed to harvest anything that grows there. Although there was one time that a worker there told me not to harvest ornamental plants (oops too late!) But I became a real regular there since there’s WiFi I would bring my work laptop and take in the sun while I finished out my days of work. Great times during the summer. I’ll soon have to go back for a workday here. 

After the post office, I planned on going to the community garden and filled a bag of coffee grounds and egg shells which I had been saving, it was a lot. I consume coffee and eggshells daily, combine that with no visits for months and it adds up quite a lot. The air quality due to the fires had kept me from visiting. I decided exploring the outdoors as I have wasn’t the wisest thing to do at this time while we are suppose to be mindful of our respiratory health. Maybe I was overly cautious, but we’re in the middle of experimental stages so I thought to err on the side of caution. 

It was really wonderful to be back in the garden and to see the changes. The rangers there do a great job of looking after the grounds and I see that they hunkered down a lot of the plants for the winter. I also saw some plants have new growth from being cut back, such as the lavender. The lavender plants are ornamental but one of the rangers I became friendly with told me that they would be eventually cut back in the fall. He said that I could go for it and take as much as I liked. I was thrilled. My own shears were in hand and I was off, whacking off some lavender. But I was conscious of how much I took, I didn’t want to be greedy and hope that the rest of the the bunch was enough for others to enjoy. 

When I got home with that lavender bunch, I proceeded to remove the buds, the inner part that smells, from the flowers and stems. At that point, the flowers and surrounding greenery had died off a good amount, so it was easy to separate them. It was a good project for a week or two. I stored the buds in a glass jar and am still figuring out how I want to use them. I should mention right now that the general name for this plant I’m gushing about is lavender but the actual genus of this particular lavender is lavandin - which carries a stronger camphor scent and is used in a lot of soaps and oils. It’s not the sweet smelling lavender but the almost menthol like scent. So it seems that I will be making lotions, salves and some aromatherapy products with this batch. I do like to cook with lavender but that will have to be another type when I find it. 

The community garden has been so therapeutic for me. It’s not a huge place, it’s super small. The parking lot has like 15 spots. But there are walking trails that connect to the garden park so many people cross through. It also has one of those walking meditation labyrinth’s made with stones. I really hope that every community, city, township has there own place of restoring one’s mind, body and soul. 

After the garden, I went to the store and was planning to buy potatoes and onions but surprise surprise, I left with a bunch of other stuff. I guess I was running low on some supplies but have really been trying to cut back on the spending. When I got home, I spoke briefly with a friend and brought up this same topic, going to the store for one thing and all the sudden a bunch of things came with it. Oh well, I bought some tiny Snickers bars. I never eat candy but I guess tonight is the night. 

Where do my Saturdays go? It went by really fast. I still want to take a shower, whiten my teeth, clear my desk, read a book and write more for read.cash. Well tomorrow is another day. I’ll have to find an article on time management.