Confession is Good for the Soul

I have a confession to make. My name is Shelley, and I hate gardening.

Shoot, I thought confessions were supposed to make you feel better, and that just made me feel worse! You see, I want to love gardening! I see all the delightful benefits of gardening. I think humans should be more connected to the earth, they should know where their food comes from, they should have the wonder of seeing how the Creator can take a tiny, dead seed and bring it to life as a plant that bears food that can feed them. I think gardening should be therapeutic, enriching, and sustaining. (So, how can I hate it so??)

I even think I have a genetic right to love gardening. My paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather and My Mom would probably earn the title of Master Gardeners. They were/are magic with earth, seed, and a pile of compost. Not in me. The gene skipped my generation . . . or, worse, mutated into something else.

There are parts of gardening which I do love.

I love the planning:



I love the shopping:





I love the heady delight of surveying "the goods":


I love the potential of this:


And the hope of this:


I love how you can take the mess of your daffodils


And turn them into this, ready for planting new bedding flowers:

(Martha Stewart Living instructed me to do this 10 years ago, and I've been doing it ever since. I have no idea if this is normal behavior for daffodil owners.)

And goodness knows I love the delightful anticipation of this:


But everything else that is not pictured here, I hate, hate, hate, as much as I long to love it. This would include all digging, cultivating, watering, composting, fertilizing, weeding and bug removing. It would also include dirt under the fingernails, sore knees and the trickle of sweat down the tip of your nose that you can't wipe because of the dirt under your fingernails.

::Sigh!:: Okay, time to grow up. Sometimes you just have to do things because you love the end result and you know the process is good for you. But I sure do wish I could love it! Oh, I do so wish I could love it!