Pretending to be a Gardener is my favourite self-care hack

Like a lot of people who were raised on the internet, I have any number of self-care hacks I turn to when life starts to feel like too much, and just about every single one of them is derived from an internet I found on Instagram or Pinterest (or maybe something I read on Reddit, if I’ve had time to dive in). But there’s one that I’ve turned to time and time again, all of my own volition: heading outside and pretending I’m a master gardener.

I have a tremendous enthusiasm for indoor houseplants. I’m always buying new ones, growing and nurturing them for a while, and turning around and selling them to finance the purchase of more plants (it’s a good system). In my fantasies, that enthusiasm translates to being amazing at growing outside plants, too, but… the reality is that I’m not quite there.

But that doesn’t keep me from trying. There was a failed attempt at growing runner beans and corn back in 2018, and during the height of COVID-19 in 2020, I thought I would be excellent at growing pumpkins in my backyard (spoiler: they didn’t grow). This summer, I planted different types of bee-friendly flowers around the house, all of which grew to varying degrees of success, and last month, I planted lettuce and broccoli out back and mums in the front.

Digging in dirt like this is, for me, a really chill vibe. Rarely do my aspirations extend much further than that; I’ve never cut the flowers and brought them inside once they’ve grown, and I planted broccoli and lettuce, hoping they will attract the deer who visit the edge of the yard and bring them closer (just so I can see them better). I did hope one pumpkin would have sprouted in time for Halloween, but I had largely abandoned the effort by August anyway.

The reality is that I like pretending to be a gardener because it’s fun to get inside my head and imagine I’m really out in my acres of rolling fields, tired from a long day of planting a harvest I’ll reap in the coming months. Or maybe it’s early in the morning when everyone else is still inside sleeping, and I’m outside watering my flowers and pretending I’m really somewhere on the coast of Maine, wrapped in a sweater and maybe even a scarf because the temperature has turned. 

Something that has surprised me as an adult is how much I haven’t stopped pretending and imagining scenarios like this as I’ve aged. I remember creating worlds as a child, and it’s funny how I’ve never stopped — I just usually don’t write about it on the internet. But I wanted to share this because it might appeal to someone else. The truth is that it takes between 15 minutes and two hours to play around outside, smell the dirt, and feel the sun gives me a much-needed boost to my body and my spirit every time I do it.

Of all my self-care hacks, tricks, and activities, gardening is the one that consistently always works. I always feel better after I’ve been out back, and planting without any hope of a result for myself has been rewarding in its own way. It would be cool to one day make a salad from vegetables I tended and nurtured or to make a soup from the same, but right now, I just enjoy the simple act of planting everything in the first place and the side bonus of animals (the bees and the deer) benefitting instead.

And maybe that’s serenity explained right there: doing something because it feels good, whether or not you’re even good at it in the first place.