Gardening and hope

I've been reading an excellent, and beautifully written, collection of essays called Grassroots Gardening: Rituals for Sustaining Activism by Donna Schaper. It's about gardening and keeping grounded.

I came across a mention of it in An Urban Plot, written by a gardener in North Carolina. I'm quite certain I wouldn't have come across it otherwise. So for a miniscule price + shipping, I've obtained this lovely book of meditations on gardening.

Something I connected with, and why I bought a copy, was an prologue quote posted in An Urban Plot that "I garden to remind myself of my hope." And her next post about the book included: "I just love this image of growing hope and curing despair through the garden and the act of recreating (create again, renew) while recreating (activity done for enjoyment)! Yes indeed, good stuff happens in the garden, layers and layers of amazing stuff that one can not even begin to measure by any standardized means."

I find gardening (both transforming our former lawn to wildlife-friendly plantings and my vegetable gardening activities) and doing garden outreach to be both personally restorative, meaningful, and grounding -- and it does bring me hope.

Gardening can be stewardship (of the earth) or it can be extractive, and everything in between. It's hopeful to be a good steward.