Nature based – a life choice

But no longer a blog

I have been writing this blog since June of 2017 – five fun and nature filled years. During those years, I’ve reported to you my challenges, total failures and successes. I’ve brought you along as I played with six grandchildren, reporting on our many projects from making a geode cake to making blankets for the homeless, from making 1000 brownies to picking flowers for Mother’s Day.

I have written about Sadie, my faithful dog as well as Jack, my long-suffering husband.

I have written about my parents and how they taught me both a love of nature and the joy of hard work and the value of a job well done.

But mostly I’ve written about being in being in my garden and the deep seated joy it brings me to work with this living palette. And while I have loved writing this blog, I’m ready to make some changes. I find myself wanting to garden more and write less. After all these decades of researching and writing, I want to dig in and experience my garden directly and to figure out for myself what works and doesn’t work instead of turning to the experts. I want to be a curious gardener and to sit and wonder and marvel at the ongoing saga of growing plants and of trying to make my piece of land both useful for the environment and a pleasure to look at.

Everything about the garden is constantly changing, daily, yearly and by the decade. Trees grow and light changes. The soil, thanks to constant attention, is maturing and becoming richer. Storms pass through, taking down trees and the light changes again. And though this has always been true, I think changes in the garden, as everywhere, are more rapid and extreme than they used to be.

And with these changes comes the challenge and responsibility of learning to garden in a way that not just pleases me but that also provides a service to the environment. And, frankly, I’m not sure yet how to do that. How do I work with nature as I garden? How do I make my space an integral and thriving part of the ecosystem? How can I use my garden to help mitigate the effects of climate change? I have a lot of questions and I’m no longer content to do things just because that’s the way we’ve always done them. I believe that changing times require creative minds.

I’m sure I’m not giving up writing forever, it’s in my blood and what I’ve done all my adult life. I’m just not sure what I want to write. Maybe it’s a new blog: The Curious Gardener, Maybe it’s a book on gardening and climate change. Maybe it’s poetry. Maybe it’s a collection of the best Nature Based blogs. I don’t know. I only know that my life, as always, will be nature based and that nature – from my garden to the vast wildernesses that I love to visit – will be central to who I am and what I do.

I suppose that a blog, like a garden, is never finished. So as I move toward the next phase of growth – and hopefully bloom! – I’ll do so with the thought that I’ll pop up in your lives again some day, Sort of like kudzu, I’m hard to get rid of!

Thank you so much for the support and enthusiasm you have shown for my writing. I will miss the sense of connection I’ve felt with far flung and seldom seen friends but I also know that the roots of friendship grow deep and true and that in another time, another season, we will connect again.