Up until recently, I had forgotten how much I enjoyed the practice of gardening. My mother kept a garden in the backyard of my childhood home, and I used to thoroughly enjoy working in the dirt on weekends and caring for the array of fruits, vegetables and flowers we kept. In the time since then I have maintained little herb gardens strictly for cooking purposes, but for some reason I recently felt moved to prepare a few beds with the intent of taking up gardening again.

I spent an entire weekend getting the beds ready for planting, making sure I had the soil just right and that I had a clear idea just how much shade and just how much sun each bed would get on any given day. I headed to the nursery the following weekend and was completely shocked by how far my dollar went there.

I picked out some colorful flowering plants for instant gratification and picked up some seeds for the sake of testing my patience. When I returned home, I immediately began arranging the most ideal location for each plant and then spent the rest of my day planting everything I had brought home from the nursery. At the end of the day I was exhausted, but it was that happy kind of exhaustion that reminds you that you worked hard at doing something you truly enjoy.

Since that first day of planting I have tended to my little planting beds on a daily basis, checking for bugs, keeping the soil moist and even talking to each plant just a bit in case plants respond to encouragement. I cannot believe how much I have enjoyed gardening, and it has really been quite therapeutic. It is hardly work, and with a bit of luck I will soon be literally enjoying the fruits of my labor.