This year, I spotted the first wild violet in my yard a week before Middle Tennessee’s apocalyptic ice storm in late January. I would peek out at the bright purple weed through the window every frigid winter morning while I sipped my matcha tea, appreciating her elegant bravery while tamping down my dread. You see, I knew the ice storm was coming and doubted she would survive. And I was right . . . well, half-right.
The ice storm did come and its ferocity blindsided us. Thick, heavy limbs branching from long-established trunks buckled as the freeze-thaw cycle kicked in, toppling thousands of towering trees onto roofs, cars, powerlines, and roads. The entire region limped along for weeks, with work and school canceled, businesses closed indefinitely, and residents forced into shelters and hotels due to widespread power outages and collapsed roofs.
As we all began digging out, rebuilding, and returning to normalcy, I found my way back to the window one slushy February morning. I expected to pay my deepest respects to the wild violet, but, to my surprise, she was there. Her vivacious petals were slightly folded in, but her head was raised, her stem strong. I could hardly believe it, friends! Groves of sycamore and elm, oak and pine, fell under the burden of quick-freezing ice two weeks prior, but this soft, silken flower — buried for ten days under alternating layers of ice and snow — remained. In fact, she looked even brighter than before!
I became enamoured by the violet. Every day, as I took my tea at the window, I noticed how the morning sun inched ever closer to her tiny north-facing plot. Earth was tilting toward the vernal equinox as Spring hinted at her arrival. On one unusual 80-degree day in early March, I stepped out to greet the violet, bending low to examine her velvet petals and impossibly thin stem. Everything around her was brown and gray, but there she was — delicate, rooted, radiant.
Without a thought, I began gathering the river stones stashed in the far corner of our patio and built a small rock garden around the violet. As I did, a vision of black mulch, more river stones, and more plants to accompany this purple miracle emerged. And though I didn’t know it was happening, with each spade of soil I lifted, with each viola I potted, with each seed I planted, I was becoming an accidental gardener.
I’m still not very good at it, friends. If you have tips, please send them my way! I’ve bought a bunch of Burpee strawberry plants, but just when I’m ready to pick a ruby-ripe berry to enjoy with my breakfast, a greedy robin eats it off the vine. And I keep finding little holes in the peppermint leaves . . . what’s up with that? And the poor little thyme plant that I mistakenly nestled into a container with sun-loving plants — it’s absolutely dying to be in the shade. Did I mention that I have no idea what I’m doing?
But truth be told, I kind of love this unfolding, this beginner’s posture. It has given me an outlet for movement and self-focused care as I’ve been nursing a particularly nasty back injury, studying 6-8 hours a day, and keeping up with all the regular life things. And though I don’t necessarily need the science to back up all the good vibes I’ve been getting in my garden, it’s nice to know there’s plenty of research on what psychologists call “horticulture therapy.”
Common sense tells us what hundreds of studies have identified: time in nature is a natural mood booster, partly due to the break it gives us from “attention fatigue,” and partly due to the physical exercise it provides. Pulling weeds, spreading mulch, repotting plants, and composting are labor-intensive, but are also tasks that we can modify, allowing each gardener of any age or ability to move to their comfort level. Time spent outdoors moving our bodies also supports healthy circadian rhythms, balances dopamine and serotonin, and generally increases life satisfaction. (Bonus points if it’s a community garden where we’re moving out in nature alongside friends and neighbors.)
I also know from my own experience that, when I’m digging, planting, and moving dirt around, I feel like I’m playing. And play as a form of therapy supports something called vagal fluidity, which helps our nervous system move with more flexibility from fight and flight (the sympathetic nervous system) to calm, nourished, and recharged (the parasympathetic nervous system). Vagal fluidity is so significant to our overall health because we actually need both the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems — getting chronically stuck in one or the other is when our well-being declines. But play gives us that opportunity to flow freely — activated and safe. Psychotherapist Lauren Baird sums it up this way: “To play is to say: I am safe enough to be here. I am allowed to feel good. I am more than my productivity. I am alive. And that is where regulation begins.”
When so much in life demands that we go fast, hustle hard, know all the things, and keep all the plates spinning because the stakes are so high, it’s good to know that there is a little plot of land or containers on an apartment balcony calling us to play. Whether it is accidental or planned, these soft and simple things invite us to be barefoot and beloved on the earth. Leaning in and learning the language of living things — what they mean when their heads bow, what they need when the soil is dry, that it’s not always about more water — is giving me a space where I feel good, feel active, and feel calmed. These beauties, all gathered around the O.G. wild violet, are teaching me that playful, feel-good doing can start with something so small, so tender, like a glorious north-facing weed that survives a once-in-a-generation ice storm. Yes, sometimes it only takes a whisper to help us find those spaces just waiting for us to unearth a nourishing harvest.
WHAT I’M READING
Speaking of playful, feel-good doing, this week, I took a break from all the textbooks and continuing education platforms to remembered myself to my favorite short story in No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July. The brief and awkward story brims with cringy humor and deep humanity that always moves me. But no part moves me more than the last lines:
Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it is worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person’s face as you pass on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It’s okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.
— Miranda July, from “The Shared Patio,” No One Belongs Here More Than You
WHAT I’M LISTENING TO
I’ve got an earworm, friends, and it’s Justin Bieber’s Coachella performance of Everything Hallelujah from his April 2026 performance. Can’t stop, won’t stop!
Wishing you color and hope and every good, gentle thing, friends. Wherever you are, I hope you’re safe and well.
Onward . . .
Forward . . .
REFERENCES
Baird, L. (2025, July 9). Why play helps regulate your nervous system. This Works.
https://us.thisworks.com/blogs/wellness-hub/why-play-helps-regulate-your-
nervous-system-with-expert-lauren-baird
Soga, M., Gaston, K. J., & Yamaura, Y. (2017). Gardening is beneficial for health: A
meta-analysis. Preventive Medicine Reports, 5, 92–99.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmedr.2016.11.007
