exercising my green thumb

Another wonderful weather day today in the south! And right now is the perfect time to plant flowers and work on landscaping. So that's exactly what we did.
Except for the latter. Our yard is sort of ruined because of some pipe problems, and I'm no landscaper, but it's nothing short of a mess. So we are trying to make it look nice, so last night we went to one of my favorite stores - Home Depot. I especially like the garden section and the paint section. But we went shopping for plants and I got inspired to start growing a garden. Which works perfectly well in a yard that is full of dead grass.
I picked out some summer squash seeds and I am hoping to grow them when our yard is fixed. Expect me to blog about squash in approximately 55 days.
But anyway, this morning we worked on planting the nice little plants we bought in our flower pots. We combined different plants and they actually looked a lot better than I thought. And it was a lot of fun, too, which makes me even more excited to start growing squash. I got so inspired that I even went on my iBooks app and bought some books about gardening.
And I looked up an article about the benefits of gardening, other than being able to eat and/or sell the food you grow.
It says that gardening helps people stay stronger in the core, have a greater range of motion, and build strong back muscles.
Researchers also say that gardening can help people recover faster. In a study, patients who had a view of a grassy area with trees recovered faster and felt better than those who stared at a brick wall.
Gardening can also make people feel a sense of accomplishment when they see something grow and thrive over a long period of time. And people tend to feel closer to nature when they garden, which, as we know from our Transcendentalist friend Walt Whitman, is a very good thing.
Gardeners also form tight bonds with one another as they plant together, share equipment and seeds, and support each other. It's a little nature circle of love.
People also say kids can benefit from gardening too. It can give them a sense of accomplishment as well as patience as they wait for their green giant to grow.
Whatever way you think of it, gardening is great. And I can't wait to go and start mine. I think that I might want to be a farmer some day in the afternoon of my life.
Until then, I'll be growing flowers on my flower garden app. Yes, there's an app for that.