By Loretta Humble/Living Well
My garden has performed beyond my wildest expectations. The potatoes are dug, the onions are pulled. The giant zucchinis just keep coming, nearly faster than I can give them away. My yellow and patty pan squash vines are overflowing, but those fruits are smaller and less intimidating, so I have no problem finding homes for them. I never really figured out what to do with the Swiss Chard, but it was beautiful, and my daughter Liz has enjoyed it. Cucumber vines are climbing all over the garden fence and like to hide their fruit in the cannas that grow on the other side. The green bean patch produced a big pot full which I cooked with new potatoes also from the garden and fed my kids last weekend. And tomatoes … do I have tomatoes—big ones, little ones and in between. They are crowding out the peppers, but the peppers are managing to produce anyhow. My tiny patch of corn has tassels and silk. Cantaloupes and watermelons are coming on. I have a thriving herb garden, which is also filled with zinnias, petunias, a few wild flowers and a big clump of 8 ft tall sunflowers. I don’t know much about herbs but I sure love having them.
I have worked really hard on this garden. I am totally in love with it. It makes me happy. I once read this saying: “Those things that make us happy make us wise.” I don’t know if that is true, but I like to think it might be.
There was a time not too long ago when I wasn’t happy, and that is where this column came in. I saw myself slowing down mentally, kind of going down hill, and I decided to fight it. I would learn all I could about staying sharp and share that information with anybody who would listen.
So I’ve been doing the things I’ve written here about—diet, supplements (click for more resurge reviews), exercise, meditation, getting some goals. Some of them, I admit, I’ve done more faithfully than others, but I’ve been doing them. I got off a couple of medications, I’ve cut way way down on sugar, and use a lot of coconut oil. I try to be useful. I do some stretches. I’m working on becoming a Master Gardener. I found some reasons to get up in the morning. I see a lot of things to work on, and I look forward to it. I feel good. (Ok, almost all the time—but even when I don’t feel good, I feel better than I did last year.) I like the life I am living.
But I have to tell you I’m not sure I’ve helped my brain much yet. I still forget appointments. I constantly lose things. I forget the names of people I’ve known all my life. On the other hand, who knows how much more stuff I would be losing and how many people I would be forgetting if I hadn’t been working on it.
But whether or not I’ve changed my brain much, I have changed my mind. My life got better because I decided it had to. All the things I’ve done have helped and I will keep doing them. Maybe being happier really is making me a little wiser, because I’ve changed my goal a little. I will be 79 years old next week and if I’m lucky, I’m going to keep getting older for a while. I intend to stay healthy and sharp as long as possible. But obviously nobody has been able to keep that up for ever. So better than fighting the inevitable I’m thinking the best thing to do is to figure out how to get the best I can out of every day I get to live. I want to stay awake and aware this day, and live it as fully as I can. I’m going to work on paying attention to what ever is going on right here, right now. I want to pay more attention to the people I’m with, appreciating them more, judging them less.
Paying attention is an art, and it is something we can talk about.
An area I’ve been working on, that I haven’t talked about here is order: getting rid of clutter and creating beauty. I’m going to work on that harder, and I’ll be talking about it here every now and then. A lot of smart people have written books about why it is important, and how to get yourself to do it. If I read them and then tell you about them, it will help me do better.
I need all the help I can get.
One thing that has really enriched my life is enrolling in the Master Gardener program. And I have an assignment, that I’m going to start right now, by telling you about the free fall conference titled “Gardening the Easy Way,” which will teach us how to garden with native Texas plants, and also about how people with physical limitations can still garden. This is going to happen October 26, in Athens at the Senior Center. But don’t worry, I will be reminding you more than once before then. I hope you will come and learn some stuff, but also meet these great people and see if you might not like to join up. They have been a real blessing to me.
Note:I usually post something on www.facebook.com/lorettaslivingwell that supplements what I’ve written here. Maybe this week it will just be pictures of my garden and the giant 15ft. mystery zucchini/squash/pumpkin thing that is taking over everything. .