What Life with a Garden Is Like

Foreign. What kind of goals do you have for 2024? Are you hoping that you're going to be healthier, you're going to eat better, get outside more often, move your body? Are you wanting to be more mindful, improve your mental health? Do you want to have more nutrition? Do you want to connect with your friends and your family in a new way? Do you want to make memories that you've never had before? Are you just wanting to be a better version of yourself in 2024? Well, I can tell you there's one thing you could do this year that would help you check all those boxes, and you guessed it, it's starting a garden. Listen, gardening is a. What do they call it? A keystone habit. That cool guy, Charles Duhigg, his book Power of Habit, he talks about how we can work at all these little tiny habits, or we can pick one habit that when we do it, it topples all the other. It makes all the other habits so much easier. And the keystone habit that I found is gardening. Because when you have a garden, you're going to go outside more often. When you have a garden, you're going to walk and move and get those steps in way easier. Because you're gardening. You're not even paying attention to the fact that you're exercising. You're going to get more mental health and clarity. Listen, when I garden, it is like I'm meditating, but it's so much less work. When I try to meditate inside, oh my gosh, my mind goes crazy. But all I have to do is step out into the garden and boom, my mind is clear. If you're wanting a place to get more nutritious and delicious food, don't go to the grocery store. That stuff has been sitting on the counter, on the shelves for weeks, and it trucked across the country before that. The stuff in your backyard, the things you can grow in your own garden, you cannot match the nutrition value that you get from that kind of food. And there's nothing that's going to make you eat that food and actually want to taste it more than if you find the joy and the pride of growing it yourself. The list goes on. There are so many ways that you can meet your 2024 goals by starting a garden. And I have this little thing I did for a class last week where I help them imagine what it would be like to have a garden of their very own. This is one of my favorite little speeches. It's just about five minutes long, but if you will go here with me, you can close your eyes and take a little trip with me into this special place. I try to bring everybody to this place where they can start to imagine what a life with a garden would look like. So that if they could imagine it, if they could see how beautiful and perfect it is, and there's no way they could resist starting one. So if you need that extra push, if you need some motivation to make your garden and all those other goals happen this year, then I want you to close your eyes and listen to the next five minutes of this class I taught just a few days ago and see if I cannot convince you two that a garden is a must do for 2024. All right, so here we go. The Spring Garden Startup Workshop. Just for a second, kind of, you know, settle in with me here and picture this place with me. All right? What if there was a place that made you feel so good? When you go to this place, my friend, your heartbeat, it just slows down. You can take deep breaths. Everybody, let's take a deep breath. You can relax your shoulders. Your shoulders drop the stress of your day, it becomes a little bit less. Are you going with me to. To this place? What if there was a place that awakened all five, not just one or two, but all five of your senses all at once? This is a place where your eyes light up as they bounce from one colorful thing to the next. You see bright red tomatoes and tender yellow flower flowers. Your eyes cannot stop staring as you walk into each new part of this place. But your nose, your nose is on high alert, too, because the smells are earthy. You smell soil and you smell compost and pungent onions and sweet flowers and bitter arugula? You cannot even describe some of these smells. You can just experience it. What if there's a place that makes you feel like a toddler because you just cannot keep your hands by your side? You've got to reach out and feel the softness of the leaves. You've got to feel the tug of plucking a carrot from the soil. You've got to gently touch that pretty pink flower that you've never seen. What if there was a place where you hear the most lovely sounds? The birds are chirping. The leaves are blowing in the wind. The bees buzz right next to your ears. And then there's a sound of your pruners and the crunch of the stems and the leaves as you make your way through this place? Place. But what if this was also a place where you can eat all that you want, everything that you touch in this place is edible. So you can grab that pepper or that bean, you can pinch some basil or dill or parsley, and you can just pop it right into your mouth. You can sit right down here on the ground and have a snack anytime you want. And what if everything you ate right here in this place is not just delicious and crunchy and juicy, but it's also incredibly good for you? What if this was a place where you could get more nutrients and more vitamins and more antioxidants that you could get from a full cart at your local grocery store? What if there was a place that came to your mind the first time you woke up every single morning? What if there was a place you were so excited to see that every day you just had to go out there before you did anything else, just so you could see what had changed from the day before? But what if there was a place that didn't just make you feel good, but also enabled you to do good right where you live? This place is so good that you end up inviting your family and your friends to come for a visit. You end up spending time with people you care the most about and in this place. And you get to have laughs and discoveries and times of real sweat, real hard work with some of your favorite people right here in this place. What if there was a place where you have so much that you had to go and knock on your neighbor's doors and say, hey, do you want some of this? Because I've got way more than I need. What if there was a place that didn't just make you feel good, it wasn't just a place for your friends and your family, but it also enabled you to do real good for the entire planet simply by creating this place. The food on your plate takes a little bit less fuel to get there. Just by creating this place, this place that you love, you've created a place for bees and butterflies, and you now have a new food source for them that they couldn't find anywhere else? You created a home for the wild and the local creatures that had lost theirs. What if there was a place where you could get your food and so that not all of it is put in plastic and shipped across the country to reach you? What if this place could help you avoid those stinky bags of rotting spinach, you know what I'm talking about? And lettuce sitting at the back of your fridge? What if this place prevented you from throwing away so much food? Because this place just holds on to your food and keeps it fresh. Until you're ready to eat it. There is a place like this, and it's called a kitchen garden. I have to tell you, I am 45 years old, and I spent my first 30 years looking for something in my life. Okay, I'm gonna pull myself together. That felt really, really, really, really good. I wanted something that made me feel so good that I wanted to share it with lots of other people. I wanted something. I believed in so much that if more and more and more and more and more people did this very thing, if everyone in the world did this thing, the world would be a much better place. And it took me years of trying lots of things. But when I finally tried having a garden, a kitchen garden, I knew I had found this thing. There is a place like this that's good for you, that's good for the people you love, and it's even good for the community you live in and for the entire planet. And it's called a kitchen garden. And today I'm going to teach you how to have one of your own. So are you ready? That is the question. Tell me if you're ready to have this place in your place. Are you ready to have this place? You can go to anytime. Listen, you can be a gardener. You can have this place. You can have this place. I want you to put into the chat, I am a gardener. All right? I am a gardener. Now, you might be having a hard time believing this. You might be thinking of all the reasons why this won't work. Work for us, right? We've got a lot of reasons why this won't work. But you can be a reason. Even if you have never gardened before. Raise your hand if you've never gardened before. You're my hero. This is how we all start. And I am so glad you're here today. So this is Jennifer. She had never gardened before. She was in our Kitchen garden academy class. And do you guys think she's a gardener? I mean, check out how she transformed this trampoline into a garden. How'd she do that? You can be a gardener even if you have small spaces. Raise your hand if you've got a small space. If you're a small space gardener. Yes, I see you. We got a bunch of us. So look at what Ellen did in her small space. Look at this. This is a six by six spot. She planted this thing full, which you can do, too, using the gardenary way. You can be a gardener even if you hate pests. Raise your hand if you absolutely hate the thought of a bug coming into your garden and eating from it. We're going to talk about this in just a few minutes, okay? I see most hands are raised here. So this is Mylene's garden. She says I went from zero abilities to a luscious kitchen garden over just a few months. Listen, my friend, pests are not worth waiting to have a garden. So if you're waiting to start a garden because you're afraid of the pests, we, me and you, we're going to have a conversation today, okay? You can have a garden, too. If you think that you don't have enough sun. Raise your hand if you're a shady person. I'm just kidding. Raise your hand if you have a shady place. Okay. Shady space. If you think there's not enough sun in your spot. I see you. I see you. So this is Audrey's kitchen garden. She's a Kitchen Garden Academy member. See how it's so full of leaves? Leaves thrive even in gardens that have very little sun. You can be a gardener even if you're convinced this is not going to work for you. Be honest. Raise your hand if you're skeptical. You just came today to see if I could somehow convince you that it might work for you, but you're pretty sure it won't. Yeah, I see you. So Kyra was like you, one of our Kitchen Garden Academy members. She said, I always thought I had a black thumb, but it turns out I just needed the tools. So most of us think it's our fault. And I want you all to say this with me in the chat. It's not my fault. Can you repeat that with me in the chat? It's not my fault. This is the one place in the world you're allowed to have a victim mentality or. Right. John's saying it's not my fault. That's right. There's really only three reasons why you don't love your garden yet, okay? It's not because you don't have a black thumb or why you have a black thumb. The first is that you don't think a garden is worth it. And I'm going to do my best. Today I just did my best to convince you. Anybody. Did I convince anybody with my long, long soliloquy about the garden? Did I make anybody think they should go for the garden? All right? Did it work? Are you mesmerized? Are you excited? Are you enticed to get out there and make your garden goals happen? I wasn't exaggerating. I didn't make all that up. That was from my own true lived experience. There is nothing that awakens all five of your senses more than a garden. There's nothing that is better to share with friends and family and neighbors. And there really isn't something so practical and tangible and every day that we can do to better our planet than growing a little bit of food in our own backyard. I wasn't exaggerating and you are going to see the reality of that if you will just give a garden a try. So 2024, make it the year that you hit all those goals, because you hit just one goal, which is start my garden. Listen, if you're listening to this and you know someone who's right on the verge of starting a garden, but they just need that extra little push, will you do me a huge favor and share this audio, this video with them and show them that the garden is worth it. Expensive, but worth it. Dot com. You know what I mean? It's going to take some work, it's going to take some time, and it's definitely going to take some effort and learning, but it is absolutely worth it. So thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. Thanks for being part of Gardenary, where our goal, our mission, is to make the garden ordinary for you. Now go out there and make your 2024 goals happen and I'll see you in the garden. Thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. 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