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Twice monthly stories for humans seeking depth and meaning.

I'm Janelle Hardy and at some point you signed up for this twice-monthly (ish) newsletter on memoir-writing, somatic (body) healing and stories. If you'd like to unsubscribe, just click the unsubscribe link at the bottom.

I have a community garden plot on a slope.

I have a dusty thumb, not a green thumb.

I got the plot last year so I’d have a reason to walk the seven minutes from my front door, past the gelato palace, across the train tracks, left at the new old folks’ home, alongside a public park to the tiny little forest at the corner of the road. In the middle of the city of Vancouver, Canada.

The tiny little forest, once you’re about 15 feet away, reveals itself as... a community garden.

Raised garden beds. Enormous cottonwood trees. Bees, bees, beehives.

Walking further in, you see three kinds of bamboo stands. A pond. An unused, free-standing, brick wall painted with a mural and surrounded by benches - outdoor theatre, maybe.

Keep walking and the path takes you right. You pause at an enormous tree with a deck built around it. For resting in the shade. For writing under.

Every few steps you’re seduced with new flowers, leaves unfurling, then a graffiti-ed walk-in storage can beside huge banana leaves pulls your attention so you pause and breathe deeply, getting just the slightest whiff of honey. That’s the storage unit for the beekeepers.

Then the shed with tools for gardeners, and even further on (how does this magic garden multiply so quickly?!?), fruit trees, then quirky characters tending their quirky garden plots, and, finally, you arrive my downward sloping patch of land.

Last year me and my dusty thumbs took part in the monthly work parties, hung out with the bees, and harvested what was already on my plot - a wild patch of stinging nettle.

An even wilder patch of kale.

Six-foot fronds of fennel, a patch of chives and oregano, and a couple seedlings (tomato and squash) that I planted so poorly they thrived-not-at-all.

I bought the Picture This app and started learning what all the plants are called. It even includes folklore about the plants, cool, cool.

That was last year.

This year, I’ve been terracing my garden plot.

It’s been dry, dry, dry.

I’m making little dirt wells around plants I’ve planted - rhubarb, berries, more flowers, ferns, six two-inch tall swiss chard seedlings a neighbourly gardener gave me - to hold the water till it soaks in.

Another neighbourly gardener, on the other side, with a Baba Yaga chicken leg hut tattooed on his left calf, gave me sage to plant.

I’ve cut back the stinging nettle. Uprooted the kale (not my fave).

I’ll bring some tomato, squash and other random seedlings by later this week. I’m sure they’ll do better than last year.

I’m not attached to the outcomes, though. I honestly don’t care. I’m loving doing something without feeling like I need to excel, or know much, or have any skills. I’m so happy to bumble along, learning as I go.

Every time I go I change into clothes I can get dirty in. The faucet for my end of the garden is at the top of my plot and it sprays water EVERYWHERE. I get so wet and muddy 💕 and I love it.

On my way home, I always stop to sit in one of the rickety wood chairs facing the chicken-wire encased beehives. Pollinator gardens circle behind the chairs.

Yesterday, one of the other gardeners sat beside me to chat while his girlfriend tended to their beehive.

The Bee Smoker had the best scent. Combined with the heat of sunshine on my face. And bees buzz, buzz, buzzing.

Heaven.

This, all of this, is foundational to my healing journey. To my creativity. To my writing, storytelling and teaching.

May you also be all dusty thumbs covered in clumpy muddy soil.

May you all be content doing something, without being excellent at it. Just being in the flow of beauty, nature and community. Being with delight.

xoxo,

Janelle

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