I never understood why some people hug trees. Until today. As I stood on the “lockdown side” of my kitchen peering through dirty window panes at a drab flowerbed, I recognized something was missing in my spirit that closet cleaning and Zoom meetings can't reach. I longed to personally connect, too touchy-feely connect with something alive. To truly touch leaves. To actually pick flowers. To imagine life itself returning to the garden — including me.

 

After all, gardening is more than a hobby we enjoy or a chore that needs doing. It's also a source of hope and a survival lesson in the resiliency and tenacity needed to start over. This year especially I discovered I can't live without it.

 

To be honest, I wasn't sure how to reignite the motivation I lost during the Covid-19 isolation. Then I remembered my mother leafing through garden catalogs in the cold dead of winter. Crimped pages and pencil marks revealed the seeds she would order for spring planting. But it was the expression on her face that said it all. Mother was vicariously gardening with each colorful illustration she saw in that catalog.

 

Today I scrolled through images in computer files. With each click on a flower, I spaded the ashy residue of last summer's wildfires into imaginary soil and nurtured my 2021 flowerbed into being. As I anticipate the garden's colors, I'll have my camera ready to once again document its beauty ... keeping hope alive.