Stress And The Single Mind

I was feeling in need of doing something different today from the editing and home bound lifestyle that seems to rule my days so I went into the garden on a warm sunny afternoon and weeded around the roses. I have always known that doing something ‘physical’ if you spend most of your life using your brain, and doing something ‘brainful’ if you spend most of your time doing physical work, is like taking a holiday. As long as you do not overdo things.

But gardening is actually a pleasant if sometimes hard experience. The smell of earth on your hands, the refreshing of a beautiful flower, assisting its growth, tending and harmonising the ‘look’ to come in the later months of summer when the roses are in bloom, is extremely satisfying.

Of course if you are a professional gardener and doing this hours and hours a day then I am sure coming into a warm drink and editing your latest book on gardening would have the same effect. It is the difference that takes away the stress. Because stress builds up a little like toxins in the body, until one ‘feels’ out of sorts and to propel that feeling into something positive, like planting and weeding, is therapeutic on many levels.

At least that’s my excuse.