Yesterday, I was scouting around in my garden, and I spotted my first forsythia bloom of the year, Only a week ago, my garden was a tundra:

Because I record things, like ice storms and first blooms, in my garden journal, I could quickly check to see when ice storms and first blooms had happened on other years, and I knew that my forsthia would bloom soon.

Nevertheless, I was delighted to see that another part of my garden year was about to begin.

As I became part of the party that was about to unfold in my garden, I said the following: “From now until Thanksgiving, my garden will be one treasure trove after another–one gift after another–and I’ll start running out here–like Little Red Riding Hood with her basket–seeing what joy I can collect from my garden.” And with those few words, I created a journal entry.

A Garden Journal can be used for two distintive purposes:

1. You can simply write a date and unemotionally state the business of the day, like: “February 10 – Saw my Garden’s First Forsythis Blooms”
2. Or you can move beyond the obvious and turn a patch of words into a song.

“From now until Thanksgiving, my garden will be one treasure trove after another–one gift after another–and I’ll start running out here–like Little Red Riding Hood with her basket–seeing what joy I can collect from my garden.

I do both of those things in my journals. But I am launching a Garden Journal Challenge, and I’m asking all of us to stretch ourselves more — to feel — and to write at least a few words from our hearts.

The weather is about to moderate, and soon, our gardens will be putting on a show. I challenge all of us to go outside and look and listen until something moves inside. But please note that the essential part of this scenario is To Go Outside:

While it is impossible to write a valid garden journal post from inside, I place what I call my morning chairs in my garden, and that is where I do my watching and thinking and writing.

Over 30 years ago, the bank and I owned a perfect piece of land that I called my Mississippi Farm. It only had 25 acres, but in my rose-tinted glasses, the place was perfect. One of the reasons I loved that little space was that it had a huge gully that rendered most of the land unfarmable, but a grove of hickory trees towered up and around that spot, and that was where I placed my first morning chair. Since then, I’ve had several morning chairs:

The thought of sitting still for several minutes is scary for some people. Taking time to think and feel is something that too many of us have pushed to the furtest back of most of our burners. To create a garden journal, that will have to change.

I encourage you to sit and reflect at least 5 minutes before you write. Take time to settle. And then write.M