10 Real Gardening Hobby Moments About a Flower Patch, a Composting Habit, and the Self-Care Experience Every Backyard Can Give You Ahead of This Holiday Season

I’d just moved to Seoul for a job at a plant nursery, and when I landed, I found out I had to wait at the airport for my health screening results, which took hours. I was exhausted, and none of the signs made sense. A man could tell I was struggling and translated everything, line by line, until it was done. I don’t know why he did it. That week I bought a basil pot for my windowsill, the first thing in my new apartment that was mine. It’s still alive, three apartments later.

At 7 I was sent to the corner store with a dollar to buy a half gallon of milk, and I rode my bike to prove I could. On the way out the bottle slipped from the paper bag, burst on the sidewalk, and I started to cry.
A man I didn’t know asked if I was okay. I was. He bought me another half gallon and I walked it home. I’ve never told anyone before. I grow vegetables now, and every August I leave a basket of whatever’s ripe at the end of my driveway, with a note: “Take some.”

When the fall bulb sale opened, I was first in line at the garden center. I’d talked with two other people for an hour and a half before the doors opened, and they told us there was only one bag of 100 tulip bulbs left.
A woman wanted them for her son’s school garden. I let her take it because I’m expecting my daughter in May and thought, what if that was me one day? She found our baby registry and bought a few things from it, and her husband, a photographer, offered to take our first family photos for free, in the wildflower patch I planted for the baby.

In August of 2019, I loaded a pile of camping gear onto my bicycle and spent seven months riding 5,300 miles. Everybody I met wanted to be part of the story. One night in Big Sur I met a camper named Moe, who invited me to his campsite and fed me. He had a habit I’d never seen before.
At every campsite, he buried his banana peels and coffee grounds in the dirt behind the tent “so the ground gets something back.” I started a compost bin the week I got home, and I still bury a banana peel on bad days. He gave me his number, and I lost it somewhere in California.

I ran out of gas on a big interstate in the middle of the day, hauling a trailer of compost for our community garden. I walked a mile to the station with a milk jug while my fiancée stayed in the car with the only phone. A guy with a rough look and a beat-up Thunderbird rolled up and offered me a ride back. I was shaking, because I had to be on guard.
He drove me up a state highway in the opposite direction, and I started sweating. He asked what music I liked, hit the button on the CD player, and it was the same album and the same song my fiancée and I had been playing when we ran dry. He took a few back roads and popped out right behind my car. He was a dishwasher at the café next to the station, on his break. He wouldn’t take the five I offered. I try to be that anonymously awesome now.

On a seventh-grade trip to a botanical garden, I sat alone at a picnic table while everyone else wandered the greenhouses. I felt sad, and I didn’t want to explain it. A girl about two years younger walked over by herself and asked if I was okay. I don’t remember her name, but I remember how brave and sweet she was. It meant a lot to know somebody cared. I think of her when I’m kneeling in my wildflower patch.

My community garden plot was a 20-minute walk from my apartment. One morning it started pouring, and a taxi driver pulled over and gave me a ride. Halfway there I realized I’d dropped my phone, and he turned around and drove back down the road until we found it in a puddle. After that, every time he saw me, he’d roll down his window and shout “Seonsaengnim!” and wave. I started bringing him a tomato in August. He pretended he didn’t like tomatoes and ate it on the spot. Super cute old man.