I am grateful that I’m comfortable in my home. I expressed this sentiment many times in the early months of the pandemic. In my home, there’s plenty of room to move around, a well-stocked pantry and enough projects to keep me busy inside and outside the house.
When the world stopped in late March 2020 and we entered the fraught, anxious phase known as “lockdown,” I cleaned and cooked, managed and coped, all for myself and my people. My husband went into full-on hunter-gatherer mode, bringing home coveted grails like toilet paper and hand sanitizer.
The experience of being in my home day after day after day was remarkably easy and strangely stressful. I know you were all experiencing this in your way, too, and to be honest, I’m still processing it, as the kids say. I know this: one future day, my grandkids will ask me about the pandemic, and I’ll tell them we ran on adrenalin, anxiety and Amazon deliveries.
Get to the Garden Part, Please
In the endless months of Marie Kondo-ing the closets and making big batches of homemade hummus and granola, I thought about what I missed most in the Before Times, and it hit me. I miss gardens the most. People are happy when they’re walking in gardens. Outside of gardens, they’re cranky and angry. Inside gardens, agendas and politics fall by the wayside, so we walk and talk and share in the fresh air and flowers.
And that’s how I entered 2022, fully vaccinated and ready to visit as many gardens as possible. I found three like-minded friends, all writers and all awesome ~ Lynn Coulter, Helen Lawson and Debbie Wolfe.
Working together, we crafted spreadsheets and plans to visit as many gardens as we could in 2022. We named ourselves the Garden Trippers and made a hashtag, because, of course. We kicked off at a favorite local garden’s post-pandemic event ~ the Atlanta Botanical Garden’s flower show and Orchid Daze exhibit.
The day was magic despite the cold, wet weather. (The day’s events were, thankfully, indoors.) We dined at Long Leaf, the restaurant on the Garden’s grounds, and toasted to our gathering and our goal of visiting a garden each month. We took selfies in the rain.
In the months since Garden Trippers kicked off, we’ve visited several gardens. We haven’t all been together since that day in February, but we share pictures and notes about our lives in and out of gardens.
Show Me the Gardens!
I’m writing this post in early July because I’m a lazy photo editored. Raw images from a dozen or more gardens clog up my phone. As I catch up on the edits, I’ll post them on the socials. Just follow me on Facebook and Instagram for updates.
Read More About Gardens
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