by Tammy Clayton

Created on: June 27, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

Obviously, the person(s) who arrived at this notion were not gardeners! I wonder if they also felt that parenthood was a past time too. Is being an accomplished cellist considered a hobby as well? A hobby would be building tiny ship models inside a bottle or creating airplane out of beer cans. A hobby is something that is inanimate, a past time you could put away and pay no attention to for weeks or months on end.

Gardening is done in the soil. It is the daily care and life support of living things that are literally stuck in the mud. Gardening is sweating and getting dirty. It is feeding hundreds, even thousands of thirsty or hungry souls whatever and whenever they require it. Gardening is like being the conductor of the most beautiful orchestra anywhere.

Gardening is a lifestyle, a passion that creates an entirely unique world wherever the bug takes root. You cannot be a part-time gardener, if you try that you will quickly be without a garden. Anyone with any understanding of what is entailed in gardening would never be so silly as to call it a hobby. A hobby does not require one to learn so many things of widely varying subjects in order to succeed. A hobby comes with simple to follow instructions, not vague signals one must interpret without so much as a word in print or spoken.

True gardening is rewarding on a level that I just cannot see being compared to the thrill of say creating a picture from little stitches in fabric. Once your needlework is done it is framed, hung on the wall or laid across the bed and never changes at all and so becomes static - a predictable never wavering thing that becomes unnoticeable. One could never say anything remotely like this about a garden. It is not the same for more than two days in a row! Gardens constantly change and never seem to lack something new and captivating. I mean when was the last time you felt the magic of a cross-stitch kit overwhelm you completely?

You really shouldn't dine on a hobby, unless it is baking sumptuous cookies. Plastic and glue are said to not be good for your health. Yet a garden can sustain your heart, mind, soul and erase hunger pangs all from one small piece of earth. There is more good packed into a garden than any other place of equal size found anywhere else. Gardens are a place to find healing, peace, love and charity growing so comfortably beside obsession. None of this is found in an airplane fashioned from empty beer cans!

Get down and dirty gardeners are guilty of allowing their

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>