My new interest is not even as impulsive as it may seem. Though, yes, I did get triggered by a cute little pot with daisy seeds which I got from my sister for my eighteenth birthday, but that doesn't mean that my original interest in gardening wasn't already there!
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| Illustration by Julianna Swaney |
First of all, growing up, two big influences in my life were my mother and her father. My grandfather has books' worth of knowledge inside his head about plants and nature, and I suppose a lot of this knowledge he taught to my mother. Now, I've never really received any lessons of the sort from my Mum, but growing up I would just look at her in awe at how she could name pretty much all the names of plants and herbs we passed. So that's where I think my first spark of interest derives from.
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| Illustration by Julianne Swaney |
Secondly, I went on a holiday to Dirim Guesthouse in Yenikoy, Kusadasi (Turkey) last summer, which was a very memorable vacation culture-wise. At the guesthouse, a small house on top of a mountain, Lydia, the Dutch hostess, grew a lot of her own vegetables in her garden. She would also sometimes surprise me with herbal tea, like fresh mint which she had then just plucked somewhere on the mountain. I suppose it wasn't only the factor of eating homegrown food that made it taste so good, it was especially the factor of eating it in the right season. In the Netherlands, getting fruit and vegetables from the supermarket, we can eat almost everything throughout the entire year. Being in Turkey where eating with the seasons is still very common, was a real eye-opener for me. How logical it is, especially, that what the earth provides you during a certain season is what's best for your health and the most delicious in that time of year! While we were there, you could tell by the offers at restaurants that they truly focused on the vegetables that were available during that time of the year. I really enjoyed their dishes with eggplants in particular, and that lovely taste combined with their green peppers! A specialty during our visit in July, was juice made from mulberries that were right in their season. They would serve ice-cold beverages made from this fruit at markets and it was the perfect thirst-quencher during those hot summer days.
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| By Lydia Barends, hostess of Dirim Guesthouse in Turkey |
The last, and rather selfish, factor that plays a part in my increasing interest for gardening, is that I've discovered how great it feels to receive the results for something you made/did/grew yourself. I'm pretty late to learning how to cook, but when I first created my own tomato/chicken/basil/tortellini soup, it just tasted like heaven on my tongue. A great deal of that 'taste' most probably derived from the fact that I had made that dinner myself! I was proud of it, I put work into it and it paid off. It's like buying something off of your first owned salary. (I'm remembering my first trip abroad with friends, to Switzerland, which we had earned all by ourselves...)
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| Illustration by Julianna Swaney |
Now, I've only just begun with my gardening project, and only tiny bits of green are popping up here and there, but I can just imagine how GREAT it will feel once (hopefully) I will be able to harvest something I planted and took care of. Imagine then cooking with that. Imagine the INCREDIBLE taste that dinner would have. No matter whether the taste is really all that great, it will make you feel amazing. I put up a quote in my room the other day, and it says something like "To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow." (Is that Audrey Hepburn?) Being my little optimistic self, I will not let anyone rain on my parade by saying my plants will probably not grow so well or that I'll probably get bored of this new hobby really soon.
I planted my garden, because I believe in tomorrow.
See you all in my next post!
Love, Eva
