I usually do not like talking about myself on this blog. One of the reasons is because I am afraid to share my writing. But, as a person who is ready to take risks, I’ve decided to fiddle my ideas around and try to share them somewhere. What is a better place than my personal blog?

Lately, I have been obsessed with gardening. As Atlanta native, I cannot avoid gardening in the springs before pollen dominates the air and land of Georgia. So, after I moved to New York, my first spring in “the Big Apple,” I felt like there was something missing in my life. During that time, I was busy writing my thesis for graduate school, and my school friends and I went a little crazy day-by-day because of our oral history projects. Whenever I sat down to write, I kept thinking about gardening. Getting my hands dirty, digging uncontrollably while my mutt barked at every thing that came out of the ground, getting cuts on my fingers, cleaning up dead leaves, and worrying that I’ll kill my plants by over-feeding them with water and fertilizers. That’s the spring that I know and am used to. Because I missed gardening so much, I started writing about it and relating it to my thesis.

There is something mystical and beautiful about nature — especially in our gardens. One of my favorite writers, Alice Walker, wrote an essay, In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens (1972). In the piece, she uses metaphors of a garden to describe and explain the struggles that Black women experience in the United States. And how people’s experience with and memories of a garden can pass down through generations, and each growth is interconnected to the past and present. Gardens harvest goods, offer us joy with growth, worry us with seasonal phases, and they can devastate us with death. But that paradox of life and death that a garden exercises in front of our eyes is so powerful that it paints natural curiosity, creativity, and beauty.

Personally, I find it hard to see the world in a positive way. It is especially hard to see beauty when I have been betrayed, silenced, and misunderstood. There are days when I feel lonely and often, hopeless. But in those moments, I sense a direction towards a small garden. Unfortunately, garden is very hard to find in New York City, but a garden exists in my imagination. Sometimes, when I am really lucky, I am right next to nature in the midst of skyscrapers, smelly trashcans, and noisy cars and trains. Whether I am imagining a garden or looking at a real one, I hear something from it. What is it? you may ask. The truth is, I don’t know yet. I’m still figuring that out. I do know this though. You learn a lot from the gardens that have been planted, are planting, and will plant in and around you. Next time when you’re struggling or even if you’re bored out of your mind at work, take a minute or two, and listen to your garden. What does it say to you?