Gardening to Relieve Stress: Great Therapy

In my desire to rid my body of stress, I put on my gardening gloves and went outdoors to do some hand-pulling of weeds in the flower garden.  Being outdoors and being productive is a good way to cleanse your body of any negative energy and anxiousness.

While I was gardening I could watch the birds at the ground feeder and in the distance I saw a groundhog posing on the river rock.   The garden was alive with wildlife and biting bugs which I found took away from the good feelings I was getting from the garden.

My garden after a day of removing weeds

Whenever I perspire it seems the gnats go for my eyes and they are aggravating.  I sprayed myself with deep woods off before going outdoors but I do not spray my face.  So I went and got the protective glasses that I wear when I am painting or doing other home improvement projects.  The glasses worked but then my ankle felt itchy and sure enough there was a tick crawling on me.

The bugs in the garden were going against my stress-free therapy so I went to the shed to look for the natural pest control that I got at amazon.com and found that the mosquito and other biting insects barrier was empty so I went inside and put some diatomaceous earth food grade in a powder sugar shaker and then went back to the garden to dust the gardens with the natural pest control.

Diatomaceous earth food grade safely rids garden of biting bugs

 

Normally it takes 20 minutes for the DE food grade to kill any ticks, fleas, chiggers, mites, and ants that may be lurking in the garden.   By tomorrow morning the garden pest will be gone and I can resume my gardening therapy to get rid of stress.

I really love gardening especially when I need to overcome stress or feeling of anxiousness but hate when the bugs bite me and make me feel itchy.

Gardening in the Heat of the Summer

Now that the peak heat of the summer is here I make a point to get up at dawn so that I can get whatever yard or garden work completed.  During this time I can weed the gardens, deadhead the flowers, and water the plants.  However, I need to wait a few hours to use any of my electric or gas-operated garden tools. 

Watering lilac shrubs in summer

I was going to use the electric grass trimmer to manicure around the flower gardens but decided to hold off on this project until next week when the weather will be 20 degrees cooler. At 9:00 this morning, the temperature was 89 degrees and I thought it was too hot.

Other than that maintaining the garden, I find it is a full-time job to keep the container and specialty gardens hydrated. The plants get a good watering in the am with a soaker hose but come noon the topsoil in containers and garden beds looks like dust.  So I am outdoors again in the late afternoon to water the hosta, coleus, and fern plants because the heat of the summer is causing them to feel stress.

Cosmo flower-like hot weather

Zinnia flowers grow best in the hot sun

The only plants in my garden that are flourishing are the zinnias, cosmos, and four o'clock flowers. These heat-seeking plants are producing multiple flowers and the plants do not bolt when the summer weather gets hot.