Do you feel insulted, does it really really bother you if someone calls what you do out in the garden a “hobby?” Do you have a deep sense that what you’re doing is way more important than things that you yourself would call a hobby?
Then, if you haven’t visited there already, run over to last Friday’s post by James Golden at View from Federal Twist. Then follow that up with Helen’s post over at The Patient Gardener’s Weblog. Be sure to read through the comments, and you’ll probably feel compelled to comment yourself. (Of course I commented, and if it weren’t so late I’d go on here for paragraphs with my strong reactions to being trivialized as a gardener.)
Answer key to my initial two questions: As far as I’m concerned “Effing yes” in both cases.
Hi James
Thanks for the link. I have been amazed at the strength of feeling my late night ramblings have caused. Normally comments stop appearing after a couple of days but they are still coming in and I wrote the post late last Saturday.
Helen
Hi, James –
You have a really new take on the matter. I wish you would do a longer blog post on this. Hey, I got here via “queer by choice.” Interesting site.
There’s the physical act of gardening that the vast majority of the public think about when they say gardening. To them, “gardening” means all the verbs of doing stuff in the garden that assert our species’ dominance over Nature: mowing, poisoning, cutting, chopping, planting, seeding, tilling, raking, trimming. It doesn’t make me upset if someone wants to call that a hobby. Or exercise. Or chores.
But there’s also more cerebral aspects of gardening that for some seems to move it in the direction of philosophy, science, or religion.
I don’t want to think about it too hard, but human endeavors need acolytes and followers as well as pioneers and leaders. So if someone has a hobby and another has a calling, who am I to disagree?
It doesn’t bother me if my gardening is called a hobby and I don’t really think my gardening is more important than other hobbies I have like reading or crafting. It just so happens I like gardening most and feel like I’m making a difference in my little plot of land-but it is only as good as I am while I am here. Doubtful it will last long term. That is the sad part. The thing is with gardening it is a good hobby and healthy and does not bother anyone else. I don’t know what else you’d call it-maybe a passion instead of hobby?
Though I love it more than anything, it is in fact “just a hobby”. What is important to me is utterly meaningless to the rest of the world, or as Rick said to Ilsa Lund, “…it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that.”
I agree with Rick, and then I think…beans? What kind? Ornamental? Edible? What are the flowers like…
Beyond that, it’s rather amazing (and amusing) that one of the first and most profound of human achievements–the cultivation and care of plants–is now “just a hobby”. We’re all ten thousand years too late.
Helen, it’s interesting to see the range of feelings on this. I definitely am more aligned with your thoughts but that’s not necessarily the preponderance of viewpoint.
James, I think your idea of doing a more detailed post is an great one and I’ll try to put something together. It’s a massive topic that won’t fit neatly into single post, even with my long-form blogging tendencies. But I won’t need all the answers to participate in the ongoing discussion.
Brent, I can see gardening being approached at all levels of seriousness. I guess I’m near the crazy-serious end and I see the activity as really different in its impacts than many things people do. I think I’d like people to acknowledge that range.
Tina, making a difference through gardening–I think that’s a really important thing to acknowledge about the activity. A lot of what we do has the potential for changing things to the good. Gardening well has that potential more than a lot of other things that we do. Gardening with the land instead of against it, gardening with appropriate ways of dealing with pests instead of turning a suburban lot into a toxic waste dump, all that is important, as are many other choices we make in the garden.
HB, one thing you said, “What is important to me is utterly meaningless to the rest of the world,” I think is really near the core of why I feel the way I do, because I really do feel that my actions in the garden do mean something greater. I’ll think about this some more and do another post.
Ok. I have caught myself getting smug or indignet or self righteous as I garden, or as I look at my neighborhood ‘o’ lawn. No trees. Few shrubs (though I’m sure eveyone calls them bushes, a term we shall leave alone). I know that I’m doing something good for the world around me, and I know it connets me, palces me, grounds me in many ways. I see it in the insane number if insects this past summer, the growing diversity of songbirds, and in my writing. I know that the prairie is gone forever, but I can plant things that once were here, and at least listen to the sorrowful echo, the tempered joy that I feel vibrating through my bones–as the wind moves through flowers and stems and links me in the chain. But see, already my comment feels arrogant in its description and colorful metaphor.
Benjamin, even if culture brands you as smug or indignant or self righteous as far as I’m concerned you’re doing the right thing. The prairie as it once existed around you may be gone but gardens featuring its original plants are more than isolated museums or curio cabinets of wonders. They continue to participate in something bigger than any of us, even if that something is diminished and dispersed. Gardening this way isn’t memory or nostalgia. It’s still important.