Gardening

Sometime between 2015 and 2018 I developed an interest in plants. It started with a yucca that I saw on the side of the road near my work at the time. I became obsessed with this tropical-looking plant thriving in the south. I asked around until I learned the name of it and it became my first favorite plant. This was the same time when my writing and blogging dropped off entirely. During COVID I started writing again when I began to post about my garden.

Gardening for me involves caring about plants, insects, and the climate overall. Gardening posts have most often come organically after realizing I’ve been taking a lot of photos of a particular subject or notice something of particular interest. When I first started these gardening posts, I didn’t have the focus or energy to put together many longform essays. These posts kept me writing in the hope that my skill would be ready when I did have something more to say.

When I found plants and gardening I was in a pretty dark season of life – a difficult job on top of the stress of being in the closet, early adulthood/independence, and grad school in a subject that didn’t interest me. Plants became a distraction and an outlet for my creative energy. When we bought our first house we redid the landscape and I made sure to include one foraged yucca in the mix.

Like all my hobbies and interests from my time in the closet, I’m not exactly sure how to feel about gardening at the moment. Was it really a passion? Was it just an “expression of my unresolved neurotic conflicts?” Only time will tell.