My Gardening Philosophy (reasons I enjoy gardening part 5)

I have been told on more than one occasion by those who know me the best that I have trouble sitting still. I acknowledge that I do have something of a restless nature, a character trait I share with Mili. The traditional explanation for having proverbial "ants in your pants" is that there is an underlying anxiety, impatience or excess energy. In psychology, somewhat manic behaviour is often ascribed to the need to distract yourself from uncomfortable thoughts. However, I am not sure any of these applies to me at this stage of my life, it is quite simply that I need to keep busy doing something (it also helps reduce the likelihood of falling asleep in the armchair once the sun has gone down).

Keeping active in the garden has so many benefits, as I have outlined in previous blog entries. However, I refute the notion completely that I garden for the sake of keeping active. It is more a matter of being incapable of not keeping myself busy, even if it is just gentle pottering and actually achieving not a great deal. As Confucius once said it does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop. But that is not to say that I have a subconscious fear of stopping (at least I think!) it is just an inherent character trait and an important reason why I enjoy doing a spot of gardening. It does, of course, as my mother would say, keep me out of mischief.

As the 19th century writer Oscar Wilde put it in his essay, The Critic as Artist: With Some Remarks on the Importance of Doing Nothing, ‘To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.' Perhaps that's the fundamental reason why I just like to keep busy, I'm simply not intellectual enough?

Mili might be slowing down a little these days, but she is still far more restless than Hecate