Guest column: Finding garden therapy

Joan Cronk / guest columnist

It is time to start fussing with the seedpods.

In August, when both the flowers and I begin to go limp from exhaustion, I start to gather seedpods. Here is what I do: I label brown paper bags to identify the flower, and then attach the bags to a bungee cord in my garage. As I move throughout the garden, I snap off the heads of the dying flowers and pop them into the bags, where they will sit until spring.

Then on a day just like today I start to smash them up, giving me all the seeds I need for the coming planting season. This is not a complicated process and all those seeds are free.

These seeds are a gift. I haven’t purchased a marigold, zinnia, cosmo or sunflower for many years due to this process. I still drop a bundle at the nursery buying annuals, but many seeds I save from year to year.

Soon my garden will explode into full bloom. Sweet peas and peonies are the first to bloom, but by mid-summer dahlias will be leaning heavily against their stakes. I buy canning jars from Value Village for 49 cents each, and stuff them with flowers throughout the summer, taking a jar with me whenever I visit. I’m pretty popular in the summer.

As much as I love to garden, mowing is my first love. I stumbled upon this method of dealing with the stresses of life quite by accident during the 1970s, a particularly difficult time for me. My husband had announced he wanted out of the gang and I had little kids, a big house and a large yard that needed mowing so I borrowed my dad’s reel mower and got to it.

Just the process of moving back and forth across the lawn calmed me. In a life full of unpredictability, this was something I needed desperately. Mowing my lawn was a constant I could count on.

Now I fill my Honda with gas, flip the little dealie bob that lets the gas flow into the engine and fire it up. Moving back and forth across a lawn is so comforting. I always know what will come next. There are no surprises hiding behind a bush to jump out at me.

I mow my neighbor’s lawn as well, and when I finish my lawn jobs, I tip the mower and clean it off, filling it with gas to await the next trip across the grass, and put the mower away in the shed.

My yard is something I bank on to fill my summer hours. I crank up my Dad’s old Sony radio and haul it around with me as I pull weeds. My yard is always right there, waiting for me, demanding nothing and giving so much.

Unlike political parties, the latest styles or finally losing that last 10 pounds, all of which have a tendency to disappoint, my yard rarely fails to deliver the goods.

Joan Cronk gardens in downtown Puyallup and can be reached at JoanCronk@comcast.net. She is not, however, available for lawn jobs.