You Don't Know From Funk

Ryan's corn picked and in the fridge (small, but edible). Squash producing flowers but no zucchini (further evidence that we are not very good vegetable gardeners). Roses sending up blood red stems and leaves. Tiny annual mums still blooming.

There is one amazing thing about gardening that makes it so apart from writing and exercise, that I wonder why anyone wouldn't trade in the latter for the former: you can garden no matter what mood you are in.

It's true. Gardening almost always makes you feel better when you do it. Whereas a bad day of writing. Hell, there are months of bad writing sometimes. Sometimes you just sit and look at the writing or exercise bicycle and you say, "Aw, the hell with it," then flip on the TV.

I do not know why gardeners won't fall into this dilemma, but as depressed, lazy, wound up, mad at your spouse/boss/children/society as you can get, there's never a moment you can't look out the window and say, "Dang it all, I'm just going to go out there and pull some weeds."

And, it is a small miracle. Problems seem to recede in the distance, you forget why you were mad in the first place. Yes, you may still be mad when you go into the house, but while you're out there, fingers in the dirt, you are not.

Is there a secret? I don't think so. Except perhaps exercise does really feel like a lot of work to go do, even if you feel great afterward, and writing... hell, I don't know why anyone writes. Maybe they like to be tortured.

Today this blog post is brought to you by PostSecret, which is a site that accepts postcards with people's secrets on them to an address in Maryland, then posts them to their blog. It's like popcorn, I read 10 in fascination, and weirdly, got the energy to finally come back here and write.

I would've gardened, but Wendy said if she caught me gardening at night, she'd kill me.

I don't know why I haven't become an eccentric. Seems easier to live that way.

(photo by Ingorrr)