As I wrote a few weeks ago…

One of these days when I’m not 1. sick or 2. anxiety filled and in a fetal position in bed, I have to get my seeds started. Gardening really does regenerate my soul.

GARDENING IS AN ACT OF RESILIENCE – The tools for cultivating hope are in our own backyards.

And, especially right now, gardening is about regenerating yourself. Amidst all the noise, perhaps nothing is more valuable than time spent outside, hands in the soil, caring for plants that, in a few months, will offer comfort and nourishment.

“Crises can release memories, and as I entered my third week of social isolation, a half remembered fragment of “Candide” resurfaced from high school French class. I must, the voice demanded, cultivate my garden”

It maintained that there was nothing more valuable than self-sufficiency, than working a little land, no matter how small, and harvesting your own eggplant and tomatoes.

“What we stand for now is what our elders and ancestors have always stood for,” Ms. Penniman said. “To free ourselves, we must feed ourselves.”

VICTORY GARDENS BORN OUT OF CORONAVIRUS QUARANTINE

Now as then gardening is positive and good for morale; it is a bipartisan act—not red or blue—just green.

How to grow your own food in a modern-day victory garden

This year, a vegetable garden may also provide one thing we seem to be lacking at the moment: control over our lives. It includes the satisfaction of raising nutritious and delicious food, exercising outdoors while socially distancing, relieving pressure on the nation’s food supply system, passing essential knowledge on to your children and growing extra to share with others. At the very least, it’s a constructive distraction in a confined environment.

You can think of it as a Doomsday Garden; I prefer to regard the spring 2020 plot as the Stick It to the Virus Garden.

Nature really is healing.