Adapting What Brings You Joy

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change. – Stephen Hawking

Sometimes it is really hard to keep doing things as conditions change.  For me, one of my passions is gardening.  However, this mainly happens in the summer and that means heat.  I have a really hard time in the heat and all of my symptoms get more pronounced.  That means I am more dizzy, I fall more, and can’t work in the ground anymore.  For a year, I stopped gardening.  I missed so much being able to head outside and pick fresh delicious veggies to make a salad.  I also do a lot of canning.  That year I also didn’t do that.  It wasn’t as much fun to can things that I had not grown.

Now into the story comes my knight in shining armor, also know as my husband Kip.  He asked me why I wasn’t doing it this year.  When I explained that I couldn’t get on the ground anymore without falling, he set about helping me out with that.  As luck would have it, I had also chosen to marry a carpenter.  He built me some beautiful raised beds so that I wouldn’t have to bend down anymore.  The next year, back in the garden I was.  This year, I introduced something else to my materials for gardening.  I get really dizzy standing in the sun for any period of time.  I looked around and saw an old walker that my brother-in-law had found for me that someone was getting rid of.  I don’t use it because it is much too short for my tall frame, but it is perfect to push over to my garden area.  When I get dizzy, I sit.  I can stay out considerably longer and do not get as tired as I did before.

What I want to get across is not that we should all garden.  We all have our things that bring us joy.  Do not stop doing them just because they are hard.  Find other ways to do it.  Ask others for their opinions on alternative ways to do the same thing.  Also share your ideas with others when you find a new way to do something.  Gardening wouldn’t have happened for me if my husband hadn’t recommended a way to fix the problem.  I think we can get in our own way sometimes with being too rigid on how we think things should be done.  My husband has also started a small business now called the Rustic Carpenter where  something he builds in the summer are raised beds for gardening.  An idea to help me out is now helping him out, and I am sure, many others who buy his product and can continue to tend to their dahlias or green beans.