Despite this cold and rainy spring, I got to pick the first vegetables from my garden this week – radishes. 

 

 

If ever there was an instant gratification vegetable, it’s radishes. Poke some seeds in the ground, and twenty-five days later, you’re standing in your kitchen making kimchi. 

As I was standing in my kitchen yesterday slicing my beautiful radishes paper-thin, I got to thinking how gardening is much more than just growing your own food. It’s comfort. 
 

 

Hoo-boy, that’s probably the understatement of the century. But you know what I mean. And I can’t tell you how thankful I am that I’ve been able to garden through it. 

Every morning I head out to my garden, coffee in hand, to greet the day and my vegetables.

 

I check and see if anything needs to be watered. I anxiously wait to see if something is ready to be picked. I look for pests. I even say hi to my worms in my vermicomposting buckets and my Garden Tower. 
 

 

And you can’t beat the feeling of digging your hands into the dirt. It just pulls the stress right out of you. I’m a firm believer in the power of simple, everyday, repetitive tasks to clear your head.

Of course, any gardener will tell you; you can’t beat the taste of vegetables grown with your own hands. Every jar of spicy kimchi, every bowl of salad, every pumpkin pie made with the produce you grow tastes ten times better than anything sitting on a grocery store shelf. 

Even in the winter, when we gardeners get our downtime, there’s comfort in every bowl of butternut squash soup and the joy of leafing through seed catalogs as we plan for next season.
 

 

Playing in the dirt, watching things grow, eating homegrown vegetables – there’s true nourishment going on, not just the edible kind. 

 

 

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