Gardening with ADHD
Most days, I work in my yard. My lovely, rainy, 2 and 1/3 acre yard. Because our home is on a slope, I've started to think of the yard in terms of levels. In front of the house is the first level, which includes a looped, gravel driveway, a driveway island full of modern looking plants from the previous owners, and a sun-blasted, smaller slope to the north at the side of the driveway. The second level is the backyard, a carefully created flat spot with a grassy lawn and some bordering flower beds. The third level lies eastward, about ten feet below the lawn. This place resumes the gentle slope of the land toward our woods, but it is preceded by a sharp slope, sharper than a 45 degree angle, where the edge of the buttressed, engineered flat lawn tumbles steeply to the third level. And the fourth level is the edge of the woods. So many possibilities! We even have a fifth area of the yard on the south side of the house where the previous owners planted fruit trees.
A doctor once told me I have ADHD. I didn't believe him.
When I work in my yard, I can go for hours and hours without noticing that lunchtime has come and gone, or that it's starting to rain, or that my hands are hurting from digging hundreds of tiny holes for hundreds of tiny allium bulbs.
Before I had children, I taught seventh grade literature at a small private school in California. I also taught ninth grade writing. And advised a student social activism club. And directed a small band. And tutored kids during lunch hour. And taught music lessons after school. And graded essays all weekend, every weekend. Probably sixty or more hours of work per week. My stomach began to hurt. I went to the doctor, and after I'd filled out several questionnaires, he diagnosed me with ADHD.
Huh? What kind of quackery health care had I stumbled into?
I told the doctor I couldn't possibly have ADHD because as a child, I'd always done well in school. He asked if I had liked school. Yes, I said. Socially, it was awful, but academically, I enjoyed it. (I left the socially awful part out of my answer. I was painfully shy and for many years I had just one friend.) Well, said this doctor, people with ADHD can actually concentrate very well—on the things they enjoy. Concentrating on the mundane stuff is hard.
I remained skeptical. He prescribed a new-fangled medicine that was absorbed through the skin via a two inch square, clear sticker. I felt like I was trying to quit smoking as I discreetly peeled up the hem of my shirt to put on "the patch" in the teachers' room at school. (Often, I forgot to put it on at home, so I kept the box in my purse.) The medicine made me jittery, so I stopped using it. Clearly, I thought, this had been a mistake. Both the medicine and the diagnosis.
Back to my garden. I have a few projects going on right now, all in various stages of completion. On Level One, I'm eradicating a ground cover called Creeping Jenny from the driveway island. It makes yellow flowers, and I don't want yellow there; I only want blue, pink, and white. Creeping Jenny has tiny roots that go deep, and it spreads through those wandering roots AND through runners it sends out above ground. I enjoy the detail work of loosening the soil and gently shaking it free from the Jenny roots. These I throw over my shoulder into the driveway. I suppose I could put them in a basket to carry them to the yard waste bin when I'm through, but I usually start working before I think of a basket, and then I just pour myself into the task of getting all those tiny roots out. Can't leave any behind or the Jenny will come back. Ooh, they are tiny! And white. And delicate. And ooh, sometimes I'll see a tree frog, and I'll photograph it with my phone, then crop the photo so it looks extra cute, then text it to my sister and my mom and my aunt.
ADHD, my foot.
Well, I'm not done removing the creeping Jenny yet. That stuff is everywhere. Meanwhile, I've removed a knot of Shasta daisies that were blocking the view of a miniature Japanese maple tree, and I transplanted them to several other spots in the yard, including the parched mini-slope north of the driveway. I've been transplanting wild foxgloves there, too, (they grow all over the yard, volunteer-style), and I've been crumbling hunks of a half-decomposed cedar log into mulch for them. I found the log in the woods and put part of it in an old laundry basket (there, you see I've used a basket) to haul it up the hill. I'm thinking of building a set of stairs on this slope or maybe removing the grass on the flattest part and making a fire pit. Or both.
It's been twelve years since Dr. Nonsense said I have ADHD. In the intervening years, I had two kids, one of whom struggles to concentrate in school, even though he can focus on his Legos for hours. His school struggles were significant enough to warrant a visit to a doctor, and after a lot of referrals and tests and papers to fill out, he was diagnosed with ADHD. Apparently, the condition is hereditary. But he can concentrate just fine on his Legos, I said. And his doctor (actually four doctors) said that part of ADHD is the ability to hyper-focus. On the things you like.
I liked school. My son likes Legos.
Oh, dear.
Well, I have many more garden projects on Levels 2 through 5 of the garden. Making terraces. Transplanting trees. Ripping out brambles. Stabilizing the steeper hillsides with myrtle and more Shasta daisies. I'm slowly expanding the garden into the forest, planting English bluebells, which will naturalize and make the place look like a BBC adaptation of an Edwardian novel for a few weeks each spring.
Meanwhile, my kid is trying a medicine (a different one than mine) to help him concentrate on the stuff he doesn't like, and I, as an adult, have the luxury of not concentrating on the stuff I don't like. Not even washing the dishes. They pile up. I buy paper plates.
A friend recently asked about my blog. I said I was writing about gardening with ADHD. Where's the entry? she said. And I said, Oops, I forgot to finish it. Now, this doesn't mean I dislike my blog, just as all those half-finished garden projects don't mean that I dislike gardening. I prefer to think that my creativity cannot be contained in one place.
So there I am, day after day, fluttering from the Creeping Jenny, to the eroding slope, to the steps I made from stones, to the wood chip pile, to the sandy bank in the woods where I load soil into my wheelbarrow, to my husband who reluctantly pushes the wheelbarrow that I've overfilled up the hill. He says I could just call a landscaping place and have a dumptruck deliver a load of topsoil to the
top of the hill where I need it, but I say there is no reason to do that when I have perfectly good soil at the bottom of the hill.
Besides, why would anyone buy dirt from a dirt store? Who keeps such a business solvent? People with hills and no wheelbarrows? My native Ohio thriftiness says I should not buy dirt.
Where was I going with all this?
I've got a lot going on. So has my kid. But ADHD has its strengths. Mine are spreading over our acres, faster than the Creeping Jenny, and I'm working to help my kid discover his own strengths.
