Welcome back, me.

It’s been…a while.

I have been gone from posting anything in here. Or Instagram. Or Facebook for that matter. But it’s for a good reason, at least for my own mental health.

As it turns out, I happen to enjoy…..wait for it…..gardening.

Gardening!

Who knew? I didn’t. But now that I’ve found myself loving it, I’m going all in.

You see, I grew up in the Philippines where we only had two seasons. Summer and Monsoon. Over there, just dig a hole, plop a plant and voila! It will grow.

Here in Canada, not so much. There are so many more considerations to factor. My early forays into gardening had not been so great. I had killed two clematis plants when I planted them in my backyard when we first moved in to our current house. I wanted a wall of flowers lining our fences. But did that happen? No. They didn’t come back the following spring.

I thought I wanted togrown my own vegetables in the backyard and eat the fruits of my labour like my ancestors did. Did that happen? We ate some produce. It wasn’t as bountiful as I had hoped and so my interest level tanked.

In both of those times, I was busy growing my photography business and so if I was being honest, I was not diligent in making sure the plants survived. And I was not curious enough to do my own research. I just based it on my own memories of gardening in a tropical country which clearly does not work here.

Fast forward to spring 2021. I bought one shrub, a dappled willow, and watched it grow. I realized the joy it brought me when I saw new leaves forming. How it got taller every week. How it swayed it breeze. It was mesmerizing.

From there, I found YouTube and several of its gardening channels. Then eventually, BBC’s Gardener’s World. Monty Don, Carol Klein. Such wealth of information that only fueled my growing enthusiasm for gardening.

And so I started buying more plants. And planting them. And that’s when I realized that hey, this is actually fun! Moving earth around is like being a kid again. Getting dirty and imagining all the possibilities of what the work you’re doing will bring. Being outside allows me to be more with nature, listening to the waves hitting the lake down the beach, birds serenading me with their chirps. I felt a burst of pride when one day I heard a different bird sound and looked up to find a bright yellow bird I’ve never seen before. It made me feel like I have reached a certain level of adulthood. Lyn, the naturist.

Wait, no. Naturalist. NATURALIST.

Anywho, from now on, I’ll be documenting what I learned so far in my journey to becoming a better gardener. I’m by no means an expert. But I am curious, and I do enjoy trying out if what I’ve learned works in my situation or not. And I figure, someone out there might find my experiences helpful so that they can learn from my mistakes, or learn something new.

Stay tuned.