The Solitude of Gardening
The Solitude of Gardening
As someone that has been raised around the automotive industry, I’ve always found contentment in working under a car. The peacefulness and honesty of the work, whether its someone else’s auto or your own, just narrowing your focus to nothing more then the tools in your hand and the machinery in front of you provides a state of functional solitude. Where it is not the unproductive absence of all activity around you that isolated you, but the focus on performing your given task to the height of your capacity with nothing in your awareness to get in your way. It’s that spot that I love to be in, especially when I can devote a whole day to that one focus, such as I have had the opportunity to do so for the last few weeks.
In moving into my new home several months ago, I found a similar retreat in landscaping and gardening. Like most home projects it starts with an idea of how to take the environment before you with the scattering of walls, paths, and existing plant life that on its own adds too much character to consider cutting down, and with your labor to transform it to something that could only be yours because it is undoubtedly the only correct way to make it look. This has been what I’ve found to be the largest advantage to the feeling I received from working on an automotive project; as in my garden I am not simply following the repair procedures laid out to me by the engineers that designed a product years ago, but I am creating from my own designs, and my own imaginations for an atmosphere of my own tastes and comforts.
My area as it is, is the patio of the guesthouse I have been leasing. This roughly 30 by 30 patio is enclosed by a sagging brown wood fence, which undoubtedly has seen better days. Though with the signs of termite damage and unstable footing, it does do its job of providing the privacy to this little sanctuary. As do the tall bushes that line the inside of this fence in the 18in wide planter box that
As someone that has been raised around the automotive industry, I’ve always found contentment in working under a car. The peacefulness and honesty of the work, whether its someone else’s auto or your own, just narrowing your focus to nothing more then the tools in your hand and the machinery in front of you provides a state of functional solitude. Where it is not the unproductive absence of all activity around you that isolated you, but the focus on performing your given task to the height of your capacity with nothing in your awareness to get in your way. It’s that spot that I love to be in, especially when I can devote a whole day to that one focus, such as I have had the opportunity to do so for the last few weeks.
In moving into my new home several months ago, I found a similar retreat in landscaping and gardening. Like most home projects it starts with an idea of how to take the environment before you with the scattering of walls, paths, and existing plant life that on its own adds too much character to consider cutting down, and with your labor to transform it to something that could only be yours because it is undoubtedly the only correct way to make it look. This has been what I’ve found to be the largest advantage to the feeling I received from working on an automotive project; as in my garden I am not simply following the repair procedures laid out to me by the engineers that designed a product years ago, but I am creating from my own designs, and my own imaginations for an atmosphere of my own tastes and comforts.
My area as it is, is the patio of the guesthouse I have been leasing. This roughly 30 by 30 patio is enclosed by a sagging brown wood fence, which undoubtedly has seen better days. Though with the signs of termite damage and unstable footing, it does do its job of providing the privacy to this little sanctuary. As do the tall bushes that line the inside of this fence in the 18in wide planter box that