Hornworms Visit the Garden, and You Can Too

Plus further reflection on how we spend our time

If you’ve been keeping up this summer, you know I do my best philosophizing while I’m working in the garden. For weeks, I’ve been mulling over a comment related to my post about the comfort of routines and work that is done over and over again.

I’ve concluded that I’m mostly drawn to routines with a cumulative effect. For example, I enjoy working out every day, because I can see that I’m adding more weight to the bar, balancing longer, jogging faster or further. When I stick to a writing routing, I watch my word count grow and drafts become cohesive. You could even say that there’s a cumulative effect to all the cooking I do, since my children are growing (I want to say like weeds, but that feels so on the nose).

The routines that drain my energy are the ones that have no cumulative effect. Laundry is the prime example here. I can spend an entire day washing clothes and towels, but by the time I go to bed, the baskets are filling again.

I wonder if everyone falls into this pattern. My guess is that people’s preferences are on a sliding scale rather than a toggle of one or the other.

A Garden Visit with Hornworms