How the Garden and Gratitude Go Together

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Gratitude Has to Start Somewhere

“You better say thank you. Say thank you. Go up there and tell him thanks.”

Have you ever told a kid to do this, or maybe you tell your spouse to do this? It's like telling somebody to say they're sorry because you know they're not.

Thankfulness. Gratitude.

It's sometimes hard to come by. It's something we know we should have more of, but let's be honest, we all know it's pretty tough sometimes to say thank you and even tougher sometimes to feel it. But on today's episode, we're going to talk about the fact that the garden and gratitude, they just go together.

If you're looking to be more thankful, especially right around this holiday season, because it is Thanksgiving in the U.S., then this episode is for you. It's all about gratitude and how, believe it or not, gratitude can start most easily for you in the garden. Don't believe me? Well, you have to listen to today's episode.

Today's Episode Brought to You by the Green Thumb Quiz

This episode is brought to you by the Green Thumb quiz. This is a super fun, easy quiz that I created that you can jump in and take right away at gardenary.com/quiz.

There's about three, four, maybe five questions that we ask you, and then we help you figure out where you are on the Gardenary path to garden success. As soon as you finish the quiz, we will send you some Gardenary resources to help you grow to the next level.

We've got the herb gardener, the salad gardener, the kitchen garden pro, and the big harvest kitchen gardener. Which one are you? You won't know until you go take the Green Thumb quiz.

Check it out at gardenary.com/quiz, or there's just a big button when you go to Gardenary.com. Let's talk about being thankful. You better be thankful!

Saying Thank You

Welcome back to the Grow Your Self podcast. It is time to say thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I’m going to be saying thank you. I'm recording this early, not right around Thanksgiving, but I am so looking forward to it. I'm going to get to see my parents, hopefully, if all goes well right around Thanksgiving and I'm just going to be thanking my mom and dad for cooking because whew! I just love it when I'm not in charge of the food. You know what I'm saying?

Today, we're actually going to talk about food and how food is the doorway to gratitude. Yeah, really! It is. We're going to talk about how the food and especially the garden that grows the food can be the starting block for you having more gratitude in your life. Don't believe me? Hang out with me for about 30 minutes and you're going to find out why.  

It is Thanksgiving. It is the season for giving thanks and we're going to dive into this holiday, where it got started, what it should mean to us today, then just ways that simply we can be more thankful and how the garden can cultivate that in us.

We're going to dive into my favorite book of 2020 that I read. I love this book so much. It's not my book by the way, although I do love my book. Maybe that should be my favorite, but this one is so good and I'm going to read to you a section.

It's been on the New York Times bestseller list pretty much all year long. In my category, by the way, which makes me sad that my book isn't right there with his, but I'm going to read you this really life-changing little section from there and I'm going to show you how the garden can spark gratitude in your life, for real.

Why Gratitude

Let's start with talking about why gratitude, why we care, why should we be more grateful? It's not just because your mama told you to and because it's polite.

There's this great study published from Harvard. Two psychologists, Dr. Robert Emmons of University of California and Dr. Michael McCullough of University of Miami, did a lot of research on gratitude. In one study they asked all participants to write a few sentences each week, focusing on particular topics. Think through this.

The first group, they had to write what they were grateful for during the week. That's the first group.

The second group, they had to write daily irritations and things that displeased them. The third group had to write about events that had affected them. No emphasis on positive or negative. They just wrote things like, “I went to the park.” “My kid needed me to change their diaper,” that kind of thing. After 10 weeks, can you guess what the results were? Those who wrote about gratitude were more optimistic and felt better about their lives.

Here's what's interesting: those people also exercised more, had fewer visits to the doctor. Weird, right? Maybe not so weird. Another researcher, Dr. Martin Seligman, a psychologist at University of Pennsylvania, tested the impact of various positive psychology interventions on 411 people with a control assignment of writing about early memories.

When their assignment was to write and personally deliver a letter of gratitude to someone who had never been properly thanked for his or her kindness, participants immediately exhibited a huge increase in happiness scores. This impact was greater than that from any other intervention.

And guess how long the benefits lasted. Minutes? Days? Months! The benefits of happiness, of thanking people that they remembered lasted for months.

Gratitude is an Attitude

Gratitude is an attitude.

It's a thought actually, it's a feeling. And we can be grateful for things that happened in the past, things that are happening right now, and even grateful for our future.

Grateful for future opportunities. We all know we should be more grateful. I know I do and I definitely think that people in my family could be more grateful. For me. No, not just for me, but for all the things. How many of you guys, if you're raising children or you're a teacher or you're a service provider, any kind of way that you're doing something for other people and you realize how good they have it and how they don't realize it?

Yeah, it's a thing. I know it's a thing for my kids where it's like, “Okay, I think you guys need a little bit of perspective,” and what I realized is in my own life is that gratitude is just that. It's literally a perspective, a way of seeing the things, the people, the situation that you're in, not so much as a given, but as a gift.

As something that is almost surprising, something that you don't deserve, or something that could honestly not be there at all, or it could be a lot worse. It's like that story that your parents told you, “I used to walk to school backwards, both ways up the hill in the snow with no shoes,” or whatever that story was. I never got told stories like that because my parents grew up in Mississippi, so no hills, no snow, but they definitely had it tough. I know they did for sure. Way tougher than me and my kids for sure have it way easier than me.

Food & Friendship

Where did this whole idea of Thanksgiving come from? I'm sure you guys have heard these stories, but I'll try to tell it to you in a unique way. The first thing to know about Thanksgiving, the holiday in the U.S. is it was first of all, all about food. Not just about food, but about the garden, about growing food and finding food.

We all know the story of the Plymouth colonists landing and basically tons of them dying. It was a pretty much unsuccessful journey when the Mayflower landed and they were through the winter, just all sick and staying on the ship and all this bad stuff happening. Then they made it through the first winter and then they met the indigenous people, the Native Americans.

They say only about half of the Mayflower’s crew actually survived to see the first New England spring they were there for. And in March, those settlers actually moved out onto shore and had a visit from an Abenaki Native American who actually greeted them in English. You guys probably know the story, he returned with Squanto, who was a member of the Patuxet tribe who had been kidnapped by an English sea captain and sold into slavery before escaping London and then returning to his homeland.

Squanto taught the pilgrims and guess what he taught them? He taught them gardening. He taught them all about food. He taught them how to cultivate corn, how to get sap from the maple trees, how to catch fish in the rivers, how to stay away from the poisonous plants. He worked with them and then he helped them to create a friendship with the Wampanoag or an alliance with the local tribe.

That alliance actually lasted for more than 50 years and, unfortunately, is probably the only example of harmony between the European settlers and the indigenous peoples of North America, the Native Americans. That's what this is about. This is where this started. It’s food and friendship. That's where Thanksgiving began. Pretty cool to simplify it down to that.  

In November 1621, the pilgrims had their first corn harvest and so William Bradford organized a celebratory feast and he had whoever was well enough of the colonists to come and then however many Native American allies there still were. I think there was illness spread both ways, but I think especially to the Native Americans.

They had a three day feast and we call it now the first Thanksgiving. Surely, they probably didn't call it that, but at least from what I read about Thanksgiving getting ready for this episode, they also had a lot of meat. Lots of deer and fowl, but what they were celebrating was life and survival. It was food and friendship. Had they not had the friends of the indigenous people, they definitely would not have had the ability to stay alive. That's the impetus.

That's the beginning of being grateful, having food to eat. Then it switched and moved more to be about victory.

Making Gratitude a Tradition

As the settlers began to fight with England to get freedom, George Washington and some of the continental Congress started enacting Thanksgiving ‘once a year’ around the fall.

The first Thanksgiving proclamation by the national government of the U.S. was in 1789 asking Americans to “express gratitude to the happy conclusion of the country's war of independence.” It moved from food and friendship more to war and victory, but the Thanksgiving that we know now as a holiday -- what actually, it's not really the one we know now, because now it's all about Black Friday and stuff -- it's actually because of a woman.

I did not know this until I really started reading it. Sarah Josepha Hale, she's an author, and she really, really, really wanted the United States to have a Thanksgiving holiday. In 1827, she started a campaign to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday and she, believe it or not, worked at this for 36 years. Sarah wrote, she was a writer. She was published in magazines and she even wrote a nursery rhyme that you may be familiar with. Have you ever heard of “Mary Had A Little Lamb?” The woman who pushed for Thanksgiving, also wrote Mary Had A Little Lamb.

She founded the American Ladies magazine. She was very into promoting women's issues and was all about making it possible for women to have more opportunity. In the midst of that, she was also trying to get the entire country to start celebrating Thanksgiving together. From her perspective, this was a way to unify everybody, especially during the tensions between the North and South, as we approached the Civil War. As the States were dividing over the issue of slavery, Sarah thought that being thankful was a way that our country could come back together. We're not sure if Abraham Lincoln responded to her, but he did get the request directly from her.  

We have Thanksgiving starting as food and friendship, moving to being more about war and victory, being pushed and encouraged by a woman, and then finally, it really came to be and got solidified during the times of highest tension in the United States, which was during the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln in 1863, during the height of the civil war proclaimed that, “All Americans ask God to commend to his tender care all those who had become widows, orphans, mourners and sufferers in the lamentable civil strife and to heal the wounds of our nation.” He scheduled Thanksgiving for the final Thursday in November. It was celebrated every day on that day until 1939. I'll tell you about that in a second.

Giving Thanks in Uncertain Times

During this year, it's really interesting to look back and think about Thanksgiving being created, as a national holiday and this is in Abraham Lincoln's address. It's really not about food and it's not even really about thankfulness.

It was almost like a repentance. He asked for a healing. What he wanted Thanksgiving to be about was a time for us to come back together, to take care of each other and to get through hardship together. And instead of it being that celebratory of food and friendship, this was at a time when our country was at great odds with one another and he created this as a way for us to look at one another and say, “Hey, let's work together.”

It’s really interesting to think about during the time we're living in, when we realize a lot of this tension and unfair treatment and division is still very much a part of our country and something we're still working through.

Another Thanksgiving Shift

Guess what? Thanksgiving then became about shopping. Surprise, surprise. In 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt loved the increase in commerce between Thanksgiving and Christmas, like everybody else who's selling stuff. He actually tried to move Thanksgiving up a week because he thought, “Instead of it being the fourth Thursday of every November, let's make it the third. This will give us more time for people to spend more money. It would be awesome.” People, as you can imagine, were a little divided in the country over this issue.

Can you imagine Americans being divided? It's wild. As I read, this was met with passionate opposition. In 1941, the President reluctantly signed a bill saying, “Okay, nevermind, go back to what Abraham Lincoln said.” He tried it for, I guess, two years to see if he could get more shopping time in, but it didn't quite work. As we know now, unfortunately in the day we're living in, it is mostly about shopping at this point. That's a trace. That's a history of what we're thinking about as we look at Thanksgiving. 

I think this bears a ton of relevance over what we're facing right now, as individuals, as a country, as a world. To think that gratitude, this whole practice of taking time every year to be thankful, to give thanks, that it started around food and friends and is really due to the indigenous people.

People that are often overlooked and overcome. In that case, especially, we're overpowered. That those are the people that we originally were giving thanks for. And then that shifted and became more about war and victory. And then it was a woman who so passionately pushed for this to become something that we rally around as a nation once again. And then that Thanksgiving was really set up as a call to repentance and repairing from all the division, all the war, all the hate and the mistreatment.

That Thanksgiving was about that. And then somewhere somehow somebody snuck in there and turned it into shopping. Isn't that crazy? I think it's a wild path we've been on. We suddenly went from a place of, “Oh my goodness. We survived. We made it through the hardest year and it's all due to Squanto and these amazing people who've taught us everything they know and allowed us to live on their land or tolerated us living on their land,” to, “ Oh my goodness.

We only have three and a half weeks to buy everything we possibly can before Christmas.” Interesting shift there. No wonder we're struggling a little bit with being grateful.

Reliving the Good Times

One powerful thing I learned about gratitude as I've tried to cultivate it more in my own life is that --and I say this to my kids when they listen to me -- gratitude is so fun because it allows you to enjoy something that you really like twice, thrice or even four times.

At least some of the studies I've seen on the brain is that your brain doesn't necessarily know when you're actually experiencing something or when you're thinking of something. For instance, I just had a very delicious apple at 10:00 AM and it was really good and juicy and I loved it so much. It was a Honeycrisp and they're in season right now and they're so good.

Even as I'm talking about this right now and showing gratitude for the apple, I'm feeling the same feelings in my brain as I did when I ate that apple. It’s like I get to eat the apple twice. Gratitude's been shown to do that. It creates whatever thing you're showing gratitude for, it lets your brain experience that thing again.

I don't know about you, but there's a lot of things I don't want to repeat in my life, but there's also a lot of things I really do want to repeat and gratitude allows us to do that. We can literally go back in our mind to happy, amazing things that we got to experience and we can, in some way, trick our head into thinking we're getting to do it all over again.

Who wouldn't want to do that? I definitely do.  

Gratitude Avoidant

But still we seem to avoid gratitude. It's just a hard thing for us to cultivate and it's so much easier to be that person who's writing down all the bad things. Even though we know it's going to make us feel better, we'll probably exercise and go to the doctor less often, it seems like our minds are always looking for trouble and some reason to complain.

That's why I want to talk about the fact that gardening and gratitude actually go together. If you follow any articles online about how to grow gratitude, they're going to say things like, “write some thank you notes,” or, “keep a gratitude journal,” or,“just go in your head somewhere and thank someone,” or, “take some time to pray or to meditate.”

I think those are great practices, but I'm going to be honest, sometimes it's pretty hard for me to pull out a thank you card and write it, or even, honestly, to take the time to send a thank you text. I know that sounds awful and you think I'm a very virtuous person, but it's true. I have a hard time being thankful.

Atomic Habits

That is where my favorite book of 2020 comes in and it is called Atomic Habits by James Clear. Have you read it? I love it so much. Let me read you this little part of it and then we'll talk about it's link to the garden. This is in the chapter called The Best Way to Start a New Habit.  

“The French philosopher Denis Diderot lived nearly his entire life in poverty, but that all changed one day in 1765. Diderot’s daughter was about to be married and he could not afford to pay for her wedding. 

Despite his lack of wealth, Diderot was well-known for his role as the co-founder and writer of Encyclopédie, one of the most comprehensive encyclopedias of the time. When Catherine the Great, the Empress of Russia heard of Diderot’s financial troubles, her heart went out to him. She was a book lover and greatly enjoyed his Encyclopédie. So she offered to buy Diderot’s personal library for 1000...” Pounds? Franks? I don't know what it is. She's from Russia. I don't know, but it was more than $150,000 U.S. dollars today.  

“Suddenly Diderot had money to spare. With his new wealth he not only paid for the wedding, but also acquired a scarlet robe for himself.” Don't forget that. “Diderot’s scarlet robe was beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, that he immediately noticed how out of place it seemed when surrounded by his more common possessions. He wrote there was no more coordination, no more unity, no more beauty between his elegant robe and the rest of his stuff. Diderot soon felt the urge to upgrade his possessions. He replaced his rug with one from Damascus. He decorated his home with expensive sculptures. He bought a mirror to place above the mantle and a better kitchen table. He tossed aside his old straw chair for a leather one. Like falling dominoes, one purchase led to the next. Diderot’s behavior is not uncommon. In fact, the tendency for one purchase to lead to another one has a name. It's called the Diderot effect.  

“The Diderot effect, states that obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption that leads to additional purchases. You can see this everywhere. You buy a dress, you have to get the shoes, the earrings to match. You buy a couch, you suddenly question the layout of your entire living room. You buy a toy for your child, you soon find yourself purchasing all the accessories that go with it. It's a chain reaction of purchases, but human behavior’s all over the place. Follow this cycle. You often decide what to do next based on what you just finished doing. Going to the bathroom leads to washing and drying your hands, which reminds you that you need to put the dirty towels in the laundry, so you add laundry detergent to the shopping list and so on. No behavior habit happens in isolation.” Let's say that again for the people in the back, no behavior happens in isolation. “Each action becomes a cue that triggers the next behavior. Why is this important? When it comes to building new habits, you can use the connectedness of behavior to your advantage. One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behavior on top. This is called habit stacking. Habit stacking is a special form of an implementation intention. Rather than pairing your new habit with a particular time and location, you pair it with a current habit. This method, which was created by BJ Fogg, as part of his Tiny Habits program, can be used to design an obvious cue for nearly any habit. The key is to tie your desired behavior to something you already do each day.” I love this. 

Does that make sense? The habit stack: tie something you want to do with something you already do. Well, guess what is something that we already do? All the time? Every day? We eat. We eat so much. We eat a lot. We eat all the time. At least my kids do. I try to, if I can. Eating is something we have to do, it's not just something we want to do and something we get to do, and so why not tie gratitude to food? In fact, gratitude begins with food.

Gratitude can begin with food

I was thinking about this idea and started thinking about the prayer I grew up with, which was the Lord's prayer. It's a Christian prayer written in the new Testament. Jesus was recorded as teaching it, and it starts with, “Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” and then guess what the next line is. “Give us this day, our daily bread.” It starts with food. It tells God how amazing he is and then it starts with food.

I started to study and research other religions and wonder do they have food prayers too? I know that Muslims pray five times a day and more of their prayers are based around the sun and the times of day but they definitely have dua. They have a beautiful prayer that says, “Oh, feed the one who has fed me and drink to the one who has given me drink.”

This is after food is given to them. It's when food or drink is given to them by someone else and then they have this beautiful prayer to make sure that God will continue to feed and give drink to the person who's fed and given drink to them. They have a whole list of prayers around food.  

There's a Jewish prayer, “Blessed are you, God's sovereign of all who brings forth bread from the earth.” Right before eating or after eating, there's a celebration of the bread and this acknowledgement that bread came from somewhere outside of the person. I found a Hindu prayer, “Whatever you do eat, offer in sacrifice, giveaway in practice, do it as an offering to God.” I don't know all the details of all the different religions, but I definitely saw links in all these places to connecting prayer and gratitude, thankfulness, and a solemn peace with getting to eat. And that makes sense.

If we tie our gratitude and start it with our food, then that can become our Diderot’s Robe. That can become our habit stack, not to make us want to buy new stuff, but to be the catalyst, the beginning of being thankful for so many other things.

Slow Down and Really Enjoy Things

I think sometimes one of the reasons why we don't slow down and start with our food and gratitude is because food nowadays sometimes comes to us in such a fast, furied way that we don't even know.

Take a second to think about the magic and the wonder that's sitting on our plate. We're in such a hurry. I know so many times I am. I'm in between meetings and calls and my kids at home, and it's just stuffing something in my mouth so I can go to the next meeting rather than really sitting and going, “Oh, my goodness. Look at this!” I actually just had an omelet and it had cilantro. I was just thinking of the magic of the cilantro -- obviously I was thinking of this because I'm about to record the podcast so don't think I'm a Saint or anything, but I'm eating this cilantro and I'm thinking, “Oh my goodness, this took 60 days to grow and it got harvested and it’s so delicious and fresh.” I put salsa on my egg, of course, so I'm thinking, “These are tomatoes that took 60 to 90 days on the vine and they were cut and harvested and put with peppers that were growing and onions that were growing underground at the same time.” I just started to pick apart all the magic that was just on that one little plate that I could eat in two minutes flat. But there was so much sitting there on my plate to be thankful for.

Even if you just tie it back to those people, the most immediate people that serve that food to you, or created that food. Not to mention the chickens and the people who raised the chickens and those eggs that were so yummy.

Make Your Own Habit Stack Starting with Your Food

When we start with our food, it can become a habit stack. I grew up with the tradition of praying before a meal and maybe some of these religions require that.

You do you, but I was thinking since the way James Clear writes it is that a habit can be something that you do after something you do. I could be wrong, but I want to say this is something I learned from some of my Jewish friends that they do this, but saying the prayer or saying, writing the gratitude or however you want to do it, but thinking the grateful thoughts after food. Here's a thought: why not after you eat, let your eating be the habit stack of gratitude.

Take a bite or take a drink or have your meal and then just take a second and list things that you're thankful for starting right there with your food.  

The habit stack from James Clear’s Atomic Habits would be something like have a meal, then say you're thankful for the meal.

Then after you say you're thankful for the meal, think about the people who created the meal for you and say you're thankful for them. And then after you think of the people that created your food for you, then think about the seeds, the plants, the nature, the soil, the water, all the things that had to be in place to grow that food and be thankful for that.

Say a thankful sentence for that. And then after you think of all that, then think about the season, the timing, how everything had to be just right for that food to grow and produce and be ready for you. And then say a thankful line for that. Then think about the fact that you're in a certain place at a certain time with certain people enjoying this food or having this food or making this food possible and then say a gratitude for that. It can be a habit stack, a food gratitude habit stack.

Starting as simply with a thing on your plate, moving to who grew it and how it was grown, and then moving to the environment you're getting to enjoy it in and the people you're getting to enjoy it with. And boom! All of a sudden, you just were thankful for so many things so fast just by taking a bite. I think it's awesome now.

Appreciation for the Place You Call Home

I said at the top of this episode, that it's actually about the garden, not just the food, because step two is thinking about where it was grown and how it was produced. I'm going to finish this episode by reading to you from my other favorite book of 2020, Kitchen Garden Revival. You knew that was coming right? This is in the preface. I've read it a couple of times this year on the podcast, but hey why not one more time in 2020.

This is under the start where I say a few things will happen before you finish reading this book and I walk through, first the fact that you're going to call yourself a gardener and you're going to set up your garden. And then I say this, “You're not just going to have a new bio and a new happy place, but you'll also gain a bigger appreciation...” (That's another word for gratitude in case you didn't know), “...for the place you call home. The unique aspects of your community, your seasons, and your weather will give you a greater appreciation for what your little plot of earth can do. You'll discover the foods that grow perfectly where you live and those that just won't. You'll see how your seasons are distinct and different and all these things will make your town, your city, your community, not just a place where you live, but a spot on earth you belong to. As someone who's moved a lot, I know this as a fact, it feels really good to belong somewhere. And beyond appreciating your particular plot, you'll soon start thinking of food as a wonder, nothing short of supernatural, not something to avoid, not a calorie to count. After you watch a tiny seed become a huge basket full of delicious salad or a little plant become a giant bowl of soup, you won't be able to unsee it and you won't want to. A carrot is about to become a unicorn to you and it's the very best feeling.” 

That’s so fun to think about. We eat all the time or we want to eat all the time, so why not take our eating and let it turn us into thinking. Use your eating, use your food, as a way to think about the garden, to tie you back to the garden and to kick start your gratitude. Let's go back to the reason why Thanksgiving was first started. It's all about food and friends, food and relationships.

I think that's a beautiful place I would love for myself to go back to and for our country and definitely our world.

What I’m Grateful for in My Garden

Here's my little list from my garden. Simple things. Five things I'm thankful for, from my garden this year. 

• The first is beauty. My garden didn't do everything I wanted it to do this year, but I loved my zinnias. I had so many colorful zinnias from July until October in the front of my kitchen garden, and they made me so happy. I also loved looking out my kitchen window at the kitchen garden throughout the entire growing season, seeing things change literally day by day. It gives me something to push me through those days of loading the dishwasher five times during quarantine. It made things seem different even when they weren't inside, if you know what I mean. 
• The second reason I'm so thankful for my garden is because it took care of my body through one of the most trying times in my recent memory. I loved that I got to go outside. I was almost forced to go outside, even on days where I felt so blocked. I loved that I had to move my body to lift my soil bags and compost, to put together trellises, to tie up plants. I loved that I got to harvest things to come in and eat. I love the moments of snacking right from the garden. And I loved the moments where I just felt at peace and clear and okay with things when I was out there.  
• Third, I love the lessons it taught me. Maybe I didn't love this lesson, but it was a good one, that time goes fast. I didn't get to do everything I wanted to do in the garden this year. I was working a lot. It was a really busy year for me, so I didn't get to grow everything I wanted to. And the garden taught me that time goes fast. That you have to do what's growing in season during that season or you'll lose it. I'm thankful for that lesson. I'm thankful for the lesson that nature can sustain us even in hard times. I could pull things from my garden and enjoy my garden even when times were tough surrounding me. I love the lesson that nature keeps going no matter what's happening on the news, or even with the pandemic that nature pushes through. My garden just kept showing up for me day after day, no matter what was going on in 2020. I loved learning from my garden that not everything works great, but everything works out. Some things failed, some things were awesome, but in the end, everything worked out just the way it was meant to be.  The final lesson I loved learning is that when you care for something really deeply, it grows. I love watching when I really tend something with all my attention, when I prune it carefully, when I feed it and fertilize, when I water it, when I pay attention to something, it turns out awesome. And that's a lesson I can bring into all parts of my life, relationships included. 
• The fourth reason I'm grateful for my garden is the magical moments. For the first time ever, we had hummingbirds in our yard, all over those colorful zinnias in the front yard. We had three sets of bunnies nest in our gardens this year and believe it or not, it didn't turn into destruction. It was just a little moment of wonder. We had bees galore, tons of butterflies, both swallowtails and monarchs and others that I don't know the names for. We have a tiny chipmunk who's made his life to be digging little holes all around the front of my house. I loved the moments with my kids when they would be willing to drop their screen -- or not drop it, but put it down for a second -- and come outside with me. Our garden is on the front side of my house so oftentimes I'm out there after I'm done with work. Jason drives up from his work and sees me there and we say hello and he comes for a little walk inside the beds. Those are magical moments that I'm so grateful for.
• Finally, I'm so grateful for the times that the garden connected me to people. Because my garden is on the side of my house, my neighbor often comes out, honestly, to put the trash out or the recycling out and we interact for just a five or 10 minute interval, but it's just enough to remember that I'm not alone. Even when I feel that way at home with all my kids, other neighbors walk by with their dogs and ask me what's growing, or talk to me about what's happening. It's been a way for me to connect with people in new ways and I'm so thankful for that. 

Those are five reasons. I'm thankful for my garden and for my food. Now it's your turn. You get to use food as the habit stack of gratitude. Take a second. This is as great a time as any, right in the middle of Thanksgiving holiday. Take some time to write out five reasons you're thankful for your garden. And if you don't have a garden yet, write down five reasons you're thankful for your food. It's a habit stack. It's the Diderot Robe to begin to be more grateful in our lives.

Reparations

I can't end this episode without saying that we do owe so much to the Indigenous people of North America. There are injustices that I'm just beginning to understand and change that I want to be part of, but I can't end this episode without saying that there's a lot of reparations and things we need to do to make things right with the people who belong to this land and were here way before European settlers. There's also a lot of reparations we have to do with Black people and those who were brought in wrongfully to the United States for slave labor.

I'll never forget a couple of years ago, I was at the African-American Smithsonian and just waking up. We were actually eating lunch there and there are so many incredible posters and quotes about just how much we owe our food culture in the U.S. to slaves, honestly, and to our Black community. I'm not sure exactly what steps to take, but I didn't want to end the episode.

I shouldn't say “I'm not sure,” but all I can say is I'm working on ways to make a difference and to change things for the better. But even just looking at the history of our Thanksgiving holiday, that it's so tied to Indigenous people and to the Black people in our country, let's recommit this holiday to making change for the better with both those populations.

Gratitude for the Past, Present, and Future

That's it friends. I want to challenge you to see the garden as a habit stack. We're going to be diving into. This Diderot Robe thing got me so excited and actually will be part of our theme for 2021. Stay tuned for the revealing of that, but spend some time thinking about the way that the garden really is a beginning. It's a kickstart for all kinds of change in your life that will be so good for you. Good for you, good for your community and definitely good for the world. Good to the third power. That's what I call the kitchen garden. I'll finish up with this quote from my book.  

 “Lastly, this book will help you see that you're a change maker, part of something bigger, someone doing real good in the world. From now on, when you hear talk of global warming or ice caps melting or food miles, when the news talks about local economic challenges or lack of natural resources, you'll know you're doing your part to help and learning to do more. You've got a tangible, doable plan right in front of you to start making change today.”  

That change can start just simply by saying thanks for the food on your plate. Gratitude starts with food and especially with food from the garden. Thanks for listening to the Grow Your Self podcast and thank you. I'm so thankful for you. Really, I am. Thank you for listening and being part of this journey with me. I'll see you next week. 

Thanks so much for being a part of Gardenary! I want to encourage you to make Gardenary a big part of your plans for 2021. We're going to be doing some incredible things. If you're a beginner gardener, I highly encourage you to go to kitchengardenacademy.com and get on our wait list for our January class. If you're an experienced gardener interested in becoming a Gardenary consultant, go gardencoachsociety.com and get on our waitlist for our training that begins in February. I am so excited to grow the Gardenary community with you all next year and I am just so excited about this idea of habit stacking and knowing that the garden really is the start to so many good changes in our life.  

Make a plan. As you are carving out your 2021 plans, put a circle in there for Gardenary because we want you to be part of the change that we're creating together. Thanks so much for listening to the Grow Your Self podcast. Go check out the Gardenary quiz at gardenary.com/quiz. It is a Green Thumb quiz that'll help you figure out where you are on your gardening journey and get resources to grow to the next level. I love you guys. I’m so, so thankful for you and for my food and for my garden. I'll see you next week.