Do it scared

a brief reflection on fear & the spring garden

Fear and I are not strangers. I am risk- adverse, afraid of the dark, and have let fear, in some form or others, dictate much of my life. It wasn’t until becoming a mom that I began facing these fears. The small moments of sticking up for myself. Setting boundaries that constantly need to be reinforced. Not apologizing every ten seconds. Embracing the dark. Taking slow but meaningful steps on my own journey.

We see fear used as a tool for manipulation all the time - from anti-drug commercials to government propaganda to modern day medicine. Fear is used to exploit the unknown, and what is in many cases impossible to learn. It’s tied to survivalists and prepping in the homesteading world - adopting this doomsday perspective that asks you to approach each day as the last of life as you know it.

In my masters degree we did many deep dives on behavioral theory and found fear to be both the most common and most effective. But everyone agreed that it was the least ethical.

In the garden, though, fear of the unknown became this mini adventure - a science experiment, a chance to adopt a f*ck around and find out attitude (because a middle aged professional mom of 2 really doesn’t have many of these opportunities). While the stakes are much lower in the garden, this is an example of how the garden has shaped who I am. This homegrown sanctuary allows me to practice and flex new skills, including facing my fears.

I’ve seen the trickle down effect of embracing an unknown in the garden. I attribute it to motherhood a lot, but when I reflect on the two, they’re connected. In the garden, I can dive head first into something I have no knowledge or experience with - like formulating compost tea or growing medicinal herbs and making tinctures or salves with them. I can plant peas while the snow is falling and say “we’ll see what happens”. It sounds small, but these moments have created an attitude of hope and openness - it’s very human to want to know everything that’s going to happen and try to control it in some way. We do that to some degree in the garden, but nature always persists.

I’ve lost count of how many springs I’ve been planting a “spring” garden, but if I trace back my most successful ones, I find one thing in common:

I planted so early that I was scared.¹

many common spring crops grow better when it’s cold. some, like onions, actually need some of those freezing nights to grow big!

You’re doing it wrong - dissecting the bird to find the song. It’s a miracle that you’re here at all.

John Craigie

I’m at a stage in gardening where it’s pretty intuitive. I think back to myself 3, 5, 10 years ago and that amount of time I put into researching how much to plant, when to plant, and where to plant it all gives me a stomach ache. If that’s you, it’s a necessary stage. But now, with all of that intentional and active experience in the bag, I can just *garden*. Not that it’s all frivolous, without doubts, in a dress and a sun umbrella - it’s a lot of messy hair, soil smeared on my brow, sweat stains and hoping my neighbor doesn’t have binoculars to watch me in my sports bra as I fight the onion grass invasion or spit out the bugs that fly into my mouth.

The reason that we still get butterflies in our tummies when a seed sprouts is because it’s not guaranteed. Even when we do everything “by the book” seeds will fail to germinate, seedlings will die, a raccoon will eat your harvest, a freak storm will stunt the growth of your peppers, and so on and so no. Nothing about gardening can be taken for granted, and there’s a sense of unknown that comes with that.

My children don’t need permission to enter the garden, and neither do you. You have no qualifying exams to prove how much you already know. The garden is the education you need.

“How do you know how to do that?”

“I tried something, observed how it went, and tried again. Over and over and over again.”

Even with this comfort, spring is unsettling. To be honest, I think I’m having a moment with spring this year. It’s my season. I have forever struggled with winter, namely the month we call February, but March is mine. My birthday is in March, but I was 3 weeks early. I was supposed to be an April baby. This year feels different though - like all of my internal work over the last 2 years is culminating in a reckoning of spring.

My idea of reckoning? Harvesting a boatload of beets and peas. Watching my kids nibble on broccoli while it’s still growing.

Spring gardening is beyond fear. Time after time, I am rewarded by getting seeds planted early - not by following some exact formula or planting on a precise date, but by taking advantage of the weather, being flexible, and taking it day by day.

1. Spring, more than summer, is a very regional garden experience. My approach may not be reasonable where you live - the point of this post is reflection, not influence.