After a stretch of not being able to do much of anything, stepping back into the garden this spring felt like being handed something I didn't realize I'd been missing. This one isn't about planting schedules.
This one isn’t about frost dates or soil amendments. I’ll get back to that next week.
For a stretch of this spring I couldn’t do much outside. Physical stuff — the kind that runs in families, works its way up on you slowly, and then one day makes bending over a raised bed feel like a bad idea. I won’t get into the specifics. Anyone who’s dealt with chronic pain, or watched someone they love deal with it, knows that you don’t need the details to understand what it means to have your body tell you no.
What I want to talk about is what it felt like to step back outside when that finally started to change.
The Garden Doesn’t Wait, and That’s Okay
The beds didn’t hold for me. Weeds moved in. Some of the overwintered garlic got ahead of itself. A few things I should have cut back in March were still sitting there doing their own thing. The garden kept going without me, which is mostly what gardens do. They don’t need your presence to exist, just your attention when you can give it.
Coming back wasn’t overwhelming. It was grounding. There’s something about putting your hands in soil that resets something in you and I don’t know how else to say it. It’s not mystical. It’s just tactile and real and immediate in a way that most of daily life isn’t. The dirt is cold. The earthworms are working. The garlic smells like garlic. You’re outside, and your body is doing a thing it was built to do.
That first afternoon back out there, I didn’t accomplish much. Pulled a few weeds. Walked the beds slowly. Looked at what had made it and what hadn’t. Felt the sun on my face in a way that I hadn’t been paying attention to for a while.
It was enough.
Take Care of Yourself
I’m not a doctor and this isn’t that kind of advice. But I’ll say what I wish someone had said to me more directly a few years ago: take the thing seriously before it gets serious. The discomfort you’re used to working around is information. Your body is not a problem to push through indefinitely. Get the appointment. Ask the question. Don’t wait until the garden has gone three weeks without you to decide you should have done something sooner.
You can’t dig beds you can’t bend over. You can’t split firewood with a back that won’t let you lift. You can’t do much of anything you love if you’ve run out the maintenance on yourself. Take care of the machine.
Take Care of Each Other
One of the things that happens when you’re laid up for a stretch is you find out who’s around. A neighbor offered to water my containers when I mentioned offhand that I was moving slowly. A friend dropped off food without being asked. These are not dramatic gestures. They’re just the basic texture of community that gets invisible when everything is fine and becomes suddenly visible when it isn’t.
If you have neighbors who garden, check in on them. Not just to talk plants — to actually ask how they’re doing. Offer to haul a bag of mulch if someone’s struggling. Lend tools. Trade transplants. Bring vegetables over when you have too many, which in July in Kansas City, everyone does.
The whole premise of a kitchen garden is growing more than you strictly need and sharing what you have. That’s already halfway to being a decent neighbor. Lean into it.
Life Is as Long as You Get to Experience It
I don’t have a tidy way to close this. Spring in Kansas City is a specific kind of beautiful — loud and green and storm-prone and full of things that shouldn’t work but do. The redbuds already came and went. The irises are doing their thing. The tomatoes are in nurseries waiting to be planted by people who may or may not have checked the frost forecast.
It’s May. The season is right here, right now, doing what it does with or without any of us. If you can be out in it, be out in it. If someone in your life can’t be right now, check in on them.
That’s it. Next week we’ll talk about peppers.