WHAT IS YOUR GARDENING?

Notes from the van on the Fourth of July

Jul 04, 2025

David Muns beside his massive volunteer tomato plant, which has grown out of the rich humus beneath.

I arrived to the News-Post building early on the Fourth of July to do some journaling and creative work from the van. The parking lot was empty—as everyone, including me, was off for the day—but then I noticed David.

Of course he’s here. He’s always here. Rain, sun, drought, snow, weekdays, weekends—David, the master gardener who runs the community gardens at The News-Post, is always here.

But so am I.

When I saw last night that they were calling for temps in the 70s till noon (a rarity lately in Maryland), I immediately got excited because that meant one thing: I could comfortably sit in my van all morning and work!

When we got a whole day in the 70s recently (a drizzly, gray Friday), I spent nine hours inside the van, just writing, designing zines and books, creating a workshop curriculum, journaling, brainstorming, with the occasional phone conversation mixed in. If it weren’t for my back aching by mid-afternoon, I wouldn’t have even noticed how much time had gone by. (I have since bought a cushion for my foldout chair.)

My notebook pages felt heavy and damp that day, just from the humidity, but the heatwave had finally broke, and gardeners were returning to their plots in the early morning while I returned to my little world nearby.

Some days, I can’t even make it to 11 a.m. before I start overheating. One morning, my laptop overheated and shut itself completely off, and I understood. A tiny portable fan helps a little.

I live for these days when the temperature is just right—50s, 60s, 70s. Suffice it to say, sitting at a desk or table with piles of notebooks and journals is my happy place. It has been this way since I was a small child.

This is my gardening—the thing that always needs tending, the thing I could do forever, the thing that connects me to God and nourishes me.

It is the thing I will choose to do when I could do anything. What compares? (Driving on an open road out West, swimming in the ocean, dancing in the kitchen.)

When I went into the newsroom on a recent Saturday to work at my desk undisturbed, a friend asked how long I’d be there, which felt like something of a riddle.

How long could you do the thing you love to do?

I was reminded of David then, too, and a recent conversation with him. As we were catching up one day in the garden, where I usually eat my lunch, he told me he’d recently taken a vacation with his wife but rather than talk about the vacation, he admitted he doesn’t like to leave his plants for too long and went on telling me about which plants were doing well (the asparagus from seed), the weather, the weeds, how his best tomato plant is the one growing out of the compost.

His passion for gardening is obvious when roaming around the plots. He points out plants, picks berries and hands them to me to try, knows what gardener or family manages each plot and what they're growing—around 80 plots, a myriad of ethnic backgrounds and choices in plants (because food is so tied to culture, which is an interesting garden study in and of itself), multiple bee colonies, etc.

It is quite magical to see the garden it its full bounty in July. (We will not talk about my sad little plot, except to say that I’m calling it my “surprise garden,” because most of the plants coming up are not ones I planted but fun nonetheless, like lemon balm and mountain mint.)

I saw clearly how we are two people who just can’t help ourselves—weekends, holidays, our desire pulls us to that one thing.

Being alone at my laptop working on stuff just never ends, so there’s no way to quantify how much time I would like to spend doing it, or how much time is “missed” when I am unable to do it, and there was no easy way to tell my friend how many hours I would be doing it, because I would be doing it until something broke me from it—a backache, a hunger pang, an obligation.

As I was writing this, a friend sent me a Rumi quote, so fitting:

What is your “gardening”?

Leave a comment

✴ What is the thing you could do every day forever because it pulls you in so deeply, you lose track of time?

✦ Candles in the summertime are for rainy days. Is this just me?

✦ I think we should bring back the phrase “against my religion,” i.e., “rushing is against my religion.”

✦ We all found our fire again. It is summertime.

✦ I was pleasantly surprised by the movie “Sinners,” which was so worth seeing on the big screen, especially with surround sound because of its incredible soundtrack/score (but it would be a good watch anywhere). “Materialists” (a new film from the director of “Past Lives”) was pretty good too (though it had a very similar storyline to “Past Lives”)—lots of food for thought about modern dating, marriage, and human relationships in general.

✦ “Your body is holding all of this. Give it to a bigger body. Give it to the sky.” —Jaiya John

✦ There are two things I think about every day, two things I miss more than anything: Dad and the desert.

✦ I created the EVERY SONG PLAYLIST. A playlist of all my playlists. It is 563 hours long. Which means I could listen to it nonstop for more than 23 days and never hear a song repeated. (Highly recommend. If you’re anything like me and have been making playlists for 15+ years, you’ll get reunited with lots of old favorites.)

✦ Sometimes I analyze something until it comes together and makes sense. Sometimes I analyze something until it completely falls apart.

✦ “I’m always doing better than I think I’m doing.” (overheard)

✦ Nothing can be birthed without the the quiet space, the womb of creation, the undisturbed protection of solitude.

✦ Fav recent find on TikTok: