Gardening as a balm after you've felt burnt-out and broken

With renewed hope at springtime.

Last year I didn’t keep a vegetable patch.

It was the first time in five years straight that I hadn’t. In May, my husband and I pulled up tent stakes and moved, so a garden wasn’t possible.

But it wasn’t just the move that caused me to take a gardening pause.

Truth is, I felt burnt out and broken. Over the past three years:

• I had to let three terrific young people plus my own husband go from the business we all worked in together—in the same season that my cousin died.

• Most of my chickens (nine out of 15), two pear trees, and one witch hazel perished.

• My husband was fired from a university for voting for the “wrong” candidate, and then his own father tried to blame and shame him instead of supporting him.

• As a necessary part of brain retraining to cure myself of an autoimmune condition, I had to confront deeply traumatic childhood memories, the hardest thing I’ve ever done in a lifetime of healing.

• My husband and I managed a major relocation, selling our city homestead and moving to a rural small town.

• I worked with law enforcement to try to put my perpetrator in jail, and we failed.

• My youngest brother and I were both scapegoated and rejected by the rest of our birth family for refusing to uphold lies and unhealthy patterns.

• I contemplated suicide.

If you want to die

• Just when my husband and I thought we’d walked through all the fires there were to walk through, our son was deployed to support Operation Epic Fury in Iran.

Yeah, just all that.

I realize it’s a hefty list. I could write a whole post on each bullet point. Maybe even a book.

2023 said, “I’m the year of dying,” remember?

'The Year of Dying' appears in County Highway

2024 came along, looked at ‘23, and said, “Hold my beer.”

2025 rolled up, scoffed at the other two, and said, “You two are just posers. Watch this.”

When you’re going through hard times, the things you thought you loved can become more of a burden than a solace.

That’s how gardening started to feel for me.

I wasn’t entirely sure I’d ever want to try growing plants again… but I hung onto the hope of it. That’s why the new home we’ve moved to has an ample yard, a bit larger than the quarter-acre city plot we’d tended for the previous eight years.

But this new garden… it’s going to take its time.

I’m trying raised beds now, partly because the land slopes and partly because I’m feeling my mid-fifties more than ever and welcome a bit of height so I don’t have to stoop so far down.

I prepped the beds last fall with hugelkultur limbs. My husband and I shoveled soil out from around our walkout basement, where water pooled, depositing dirt in the screen-door track, always a fun time. That soil went on top of the limbs. I layered straw over it, my own take on lasagne-gardening.

We’ve done hugels before, a highly successful herb-mound fed by decaying logs, and assorted limbs placed under our annual veg patch.

Thrillingly, the three beds I prepped this way last fall are full of worms now. At the end of March, I sowed lettuce, radish, and carrot seeds. For our hot, humid temps and clay soils, I chose Parris Island Cos, a romaine lettuce from Baker Creek Seeds and New Kuroda carrots, a blocky type I’ve grown for years. The radish I picked up from our new library’s free seed bank, and the variety wasn’t noted.

I used to keep a rather complex spreadsheet as a garden log, but now I’ve simplified with a visual version. You can see three small raised beds, an asparagus patch, a raised bed shaped like a keyhole, and the last bed in the upper left.

Here’s what that looks like in real life.

It’s still on that spreadsheet, but the asparagus I crudely transplanted from the old place has sadly refused to send up spears this spring. A moment of silence for the asparagus….

Mostly what we’ve been doing is addressing a drainage problem. I’ll get into that in a separate post I could title “A River Runs Through It.” 😂 We’re working on a wet/dry creek-and-pond solution—when we’re not mowing and string trimming. My people call that “weed-whacking,” by the way.

I first realized I’d hit a wall with my city-homesteading obsession two years ago, when I said,

This is our seventh year here, and I have been feeling ambivalent about the garden. Usually by now, just a week before spring’s official start date, I’ve got stacks of seed packets labeled for “spring cool” or “warm” season or “fall cool.” My garden-planning spreadsheet is normally up-to-date, the garden itself tidily waiting. The chicks had been ordered by this time last year, the garden tour dates set.

But not so here in 2024. There have been delays, hemming and hawing, a call to a landscaper about putting in paths… possibly. A subtle question whether we should keep doing this at all.

We will, though. We will. Despite age advancing in the form of greater aches and pains, an increased sensitivity to things we once met with ease, like the clock change for Daylight Savings. The insomnia struggle is real.

The 7-year gardening itch

In that post, I went on to update you with my spring gardening plans. But now, two years later, after what in the tabletop gaming world we call a “board wipe,” I’m sitting here trying to figure out what I’ll actually bring back in.

The sourdough starter I hadn’t fed in a year failed to reactivate after three full days. Just a few minutes’ drive from my house—I could actually walk there, but I don’t because there are no sidewalks on old country roads—a homesteader sells delicious sourdough baked goods for Saturday pickup.

…So maybe not sourdough? …Really? I practically wrote a book on it, with recipes for how to start a culture and make sourdough cranberry-oat bars, along with deep dives on topics such as the pre-ferment and why fermented grains are better for you in the first place.

I do miss kneading dough, a decidedly somatic exercise, and very soothing.

But there’s that wet/dry creek, which needs to be filled with water-loving shade plants.

And the ash tree—remember I mentioned it was infested with emerald ash borer. When a crew came in and yanked it out, they left a big empty spot in the front yard. We’ve added two apple trees: A semi-dwarf CrimsonCrisp red apple and dwarf Ginger Gold yellow apple, both from Stark Bros., a Missouri nursery I’ve written about previously. Maybe a ground cover instead of grass. The front yard is south-facing.

As I said on Notes, I thought I’d plant huckleberries with them, but I accidentally ordered the evergreen variety, all wrong for my location. So those went in on the north side of our pole barn, where they have a better chance.

Anthony, my other half, makes kombucha, and for this I am deeply grateful. I don’t have to do anything, and kombucha shows up in my fridge. The mothers are taking over the shelf, like blobs threatening to devour our home.

He’s also fond of fashioning ferments, which doubly makes me a lucky gal. Once the farmer’s markets open again, we’ll get some cabbage for sauerkraut. Here’s our recipe for that, which you get in a 36-page PDF booklet with all our other recipes when you upgrade to a paid membership.

We don’t grow it ourselves, as it requires a lot of space, and for some reason known only to cabbage, we haven’t had much success with it. Some plants are like that. Ditto potatoes. Anthony even bombed with a potato tower he tried in ‘24.

He’s not fond of gardening. I can hang out in the back forty with dirt between my fingers all the day long, but he gets testy if the work goes on too long. I’ve learned to press him into service only on specific, short-term tasks, usually the ones that require his manly muscles. He also needs to know the work leads to something useful or pleasurable, like a bunch of tasty, fresh carrots, or herbed sour cream.

I’m pretty strong, especially for my sex and size, but Anthony can shovel a load of mulch in a fraction of the time, and there are plenty of yard items I can’t lift at all that he can pick up like it’s nothing. Biological differences are real, and don’t spout off in the comments section about the chick you know who can deadlift 400, or the dude who can’t lift a finger. I’ve never been impressed by outliers.

What else gets jettisoned from the gardening plans?

We won’t be growing peas anymore even though they taste so good. They take up a lot of space, need to be trellised, and shelling makes them labor intensive.

Arugula bolts too easily in our climate, it turns out mustard is too spicy for regular eating, and Anthony doesn’t like Swiss chard enough to justify growing it.

Seeds for my spring plantings—lettuce, carrots, radishes—I sowed those directly into the soil, but now I have that little pole barn with electricity. Since our meddling indoor cat can’t get out there to dig them up, I could grow starts. That would require an investment in some grow lights, heating pads, and start kits. A decision for next year.

Tomatoes and basil are two plants you should grow yourself, for taste alone. They need to be started indoors where I live, so I need to either get with that barn plan or buy starts. Buying starts is always more expensive, of course.

But should I invest in a grow setup if I’m just starting tomatoes and basil? Probably not.

Cucumbers are a must: They actually prefer direct sowing, and there’s no pickle you can buy that beats the pickles you can ferment yourself.

In 2024 I discovered how easy it is to grow okra here. They’re prolific, tasty, less slimy if you grow them yourself, and besides, that slime is a demulcent that keeps your internal tissue-lining healthy. Okra, along with fenugreek, also helps your body remove microplastics.

I’m really not being paid by the okra board or anything. I just think they’re underrated.

Peppers and eggplant tease me with their promise, but they never seem to deliver.

I have a love/hate thing going with zucchini, as do most gardeners. If we could figure out how to get a seed packet with only three guaranteed-viable seeds in it…

I’ve been keen to try watermelon because you stick a tiny seed in the ground, and out comes a gargantuan piece of food, like magic!

But these and winter squash take up a lot of space. I’d have to let them wander far outside the raised beds… over the grass that needs to be mowed.

I fantasize about a moon arch covered in coral honeysuckle, trying edible natives like nannyberry and hawthorn, or growing grapes on the old metal-tube outdoor room we bought for the chickshaw. Maybe some currants. Should we grow elderberries again, or are they too much work to harvest?

At some ambitious moment last summer, I drafted out a plan for a strawberry patch. I look at that plan now and wonder why strawberries are so fussy.

When workers yanked the chain-link fence out, I told them to leave three poles behind, thinking I’d plant blackberries between them. But now I’m worried it’s too shady there, near an evergreen.

As for the writing… I’ve continued to write for games as a solo gig these past three years, and that’s been lonely… and weird… but a good income. I’ve kept at it even though I was technically burned out after those painful layoffs. I’ve been making a living as a game writer for twenty years, but this other writing calls to me… How does one heed the call, as the clock of time slowly ticks?

Since returning to Substack and shifting to more personal writing, my audience has both grown… and been pruned back. I’ve churned to a net neutral. I guess that’s something?

My life has as much certainty as this garden. How about yours?

Anthony’s retired now, as he’s ahead of me by some years. Being fired for his political views here in what we thought was still a free country was shocking, but we were prepared for it financially, at least, if not emotionally. Naw, he doesn’t want to sue and become the poster child for all that is wrong in academia. He’d rather make kombucha and sauerkraut and play games. He’ll soon start part-time work for our local library, a dream job.

Our son is a saving grace for us both, as the kid man approaches life with optimism, resilience, and abundant strength. He keeps telling us that the safest place to be in the Middle East is on his aircraft carrier but that his work in the Navy is seriously testing him. I think if he’s aware he’s being tested, he’s already passed the test.

Recently, I realized I was simply cycling through the stages of grief: denial/shock, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. It makes sense; I felt as a child that I’d died, and some part of me did die when I was brutally hurt by my own parents. I’m walking the line between allowing anger and sadness and not getting swallowed by those feelings.

I’ll let you know when I get to acceptance and stay there. Maybe you’re already there, waiting for me. Or maybe you’re behind me on that journey, and you’ll take my offered hand. Either way, I wish you the best, in your garden and in life.