Having two large gardens is a trial run to see if my body can handle it. So far, I haven’t missed a deadline. I adapt the techniques and tools to what my body can handle, but the most important lessons were on patience, pacing, and perfectionism.

Good morning, it’s August and it’s so cold. It was single-digit temperatures last night. I don’t really want to have to think about frost in August. I know we’re still about 9.5 degrees away from frost, but it’s August and I’m cold.

The constant temperature ping pong was hard on my body. I was exhausted all the time. We went straight from constant rain and a thick cloud cover to a heat wave with zero rain. But most nights were chilly.

The garden was hanging in there. A lot of manual watering kept things going. I was lucky to have water to spare. There was finally some rain on the forecast. I wanted to get the spinach in before the storm.

The spinach bed was still a potato bed which meant a good day ahead of me: digging for treasure. I love the slow, manual labor of digging up potatoes in the dirt. The summer garden brought me much joy. In real life, things were less rosy.

For the past few months, I’ve been struggling with getting any kind of support from the government for my disability.

I have now a recognized disability, but it’s not a severe one. So they don’t… well, to them it’s not a severe one. They only gave me 20% disability, which essentially gives me nothing. I think it’s a $300 per year tax credit. Yeah, essentially nothing.

So I’ve been fighting for some kind of pension or social support. And to get that, I have to convince people that I am as sick as I am. And that’s been really, really tough and draining and exhausting.

Really big part of the issue is that I can do all these things.

I can garden, I can climb trees, I can do barrel rolls. I can do all of these things, but in tiny doses. So if I work for two hours in the garden, that’s what I’m doing that day.

I might be able to cook dinner if I’m lucky, but I rarely ever have more than three or four hours standing and doing things in a day in me.

If I have to do something social, it spend a lot of social batteries and that drains me further. And if it’s anything with people, that social interaction. It doesn’t matter if it’s friends or others, they are varying degrees of exhausting. But all of it is exhausting.

And if I have to think about something like do something for studying or read a book or something that requires my brain to not be in a cloud of fog, it’s even less than that.

So I have to always keep my batteries balanced. And the problem is I still can do all the things. I just can’t do them for very long. And that makes people discount my disability because I can do everything. So what am I complaining about? And it’s been frustrating to say the least.

I’ve been fighting for a month now to get some kind of recognition and support because at this point, my husband has to support both of us and I am expensive. My medication is 450 bucks a month. My therapy is about 200 bucks a month. So I spend a lot of money on staying sane and staying as healthy as I can and being able to even do the three, four hours in a day. It’s exhausting.

And while my husband is the most supportive person I know, he’s–I love him so much. And–but I–It’s hard on me to know that I am a burden. He doesn’t complain. I do. And it’s just that’s another thing weighing on my mind all the time. So now I’m trying to figure out how to not be stuck in the situation. And that hasn’t been easy easy. And so far I’ve been hitting wall after wall after wall. So yeah, that’s all I’m going to say about that. Let’s return to funner things and gardens and stuff.

The garden is mental and physical therapy for me. My joints are messed up, so my muscles have to pick up the slack. The very varied work here let me grow stronger–and keep myself upright for longer. It’s a tough balancing act. If I overdo it, I’m out for a few days.

When I am really exhausted, I can fall over because I have to sneeze or cough. This happened to me this weekend at a festival. I overdid it there. The heat, a lot of walking, and even more standing around exhausted my body–even without alcohol.

I’ve told you before that this garden is a trial run. This has more than one sense. I needed to know if my body could handle it. So far, I haven’t missed a deadline.

My garden looks different than many. I experiment a lot to see what jobs are necessary, and which I can skip. I’ve learned which growing techniques are most suited to what my body can handle.

Heavy mulching, manual weeding, as little digging as possible–those were key. Luckily, a lot of regenerative agricultural techniques are ideal for me.

I switch task and position frequently to not overtax any area of my body. Most of the time, the slow manual approach works best for me. I use a cart instead of a wheelbarrow. I use an electric pump. But mostly, I use my hands and feet.

When taking on the gardens, I feared I wouldn’t be able to do all of this. I thought I’d need a lot of help. But most things in the garden aren’t urgent. They can wait a day or two for me to feel better.

Last year, before and during the roof project, I did a lot of mobility training. This mobility now allows me to switch positions a lot. Squatting is still most comfortable for me.

Not a single one of these plants will survive the slugs. A few weeks later, I’d cover crop this bed instead.

Slugs have been an ongoing issue in the garden but we’ll talk about the little slimies another day. I’m already about to interrupt our topic with a short detour on soil blocks.

Okay, and this is why I like soil blocks so much: If you just have a look at the roots over here, you can see that they’re very happy and healthy, but none of them are going in circles because they hit air and they realize that’s the end of it. Okay, let’s get these planted.

Tools and techniques are important for me to be able to have a large garden. The most important lesson have been on pacing, patience, and perfection, though.

My garden looks very different from other gardens–and that’s totally okay.

I will never have a neat and tidy garden. By now, I prefer that. The media ingrains that gardens need to look a certain way. Nature is not neat.

I’d probably have fewer slugs in a neat garden with short lawns and nothing lying around. But slugs aren’t the only animals to make the nooks and crevices their home. Appreciating a garden shared with the wildlife here has cured me of perfectionism. If I keep it up, I’m sure more predators will call this place home and eat my pests.

Things often take longer here than I thought or go wrong the first time and need to be redone. The garden has its own pace. I can nurture it and support it but I can’t rush nature.

Nor can I rush myself. Pacing myself, conserving the little energy I have to offer, has been the hardest lesson. My energy, like the water, the mulch, the soil, is a limited resource. I need to treat it that way.

I’ve learned my pace this year. I’ve also learned how to listen to my body and the garden. Listening to the garden has changed the way I look at nature. But we’ll talk about that another day.

So long and thanks for being here. If you want to support the channel and help me keep making these videos, consider doing all the YouTube things like commenting, subscribing, whatever for the algorithm, but also consider supporting with a donation.

If you like books, there’s also my novels you could buy, though I only get a portion of that money because I have to pay the distributor and publisher, not publisher, I’m the publisher. But all the middlemen that make it possible for me to get the book to you.

So yeah, anyway, I appreciate every single one of you. So long and thanks for being here.