April is National Gardening Month, and we will celebrate with different features looking at the facility gardens around the state. First up is an essay written by an inmate at SCI Somerset.
A Garden of Hope, A Garden of Life
Ah… Spring… that can only mean one thing… It's time to bring out the garden! Some folks ask me why I do it. To start with, if you're familiar with the movie "Shawshank Redemption," where the lead character Andy Dufrense, wanted to feel normal again by volunteering to help tar the roof, and where they were drinking a beer, just to feel
normal again. That's just one reason I really enjoy putting in the garden within the perimeter of SCI Somerset. For six years now, it's been the highlight of my year. And unlike a brief phone call or visit, or the good feeling of a holiday… it lasts some seven months!
Most people on the street, toil at their jobs, drive home and work in the yard, or garden. The fact is,
I get to do that, I work in the commissary all day, come "home" to E Unit, and proceed to do what the average Joe gets to do. It's so fulfilling at the same time. Albeit that I'd like a larger home on the street, but this is my situation I life, and I've chosen to make the best of it. This is my home, and my front yard. Some have asked, am I getting paid? Paid. Yes. With basking in the warm sun, making a positive change that all can enjoy if they choose to. I'm outside, after yard is over. A different sense of freedom, which again, benefits others all summer long! Besides, I'm challenged, to give E-Unit, the best garden in SCI Somerset.
It's spring. Time for regrowth, second chances, rebirth. Is it just me, or did this past winter (2018-19) seem to drag on forever……..? Most of the world's religions look at rebirth, a new beginning as a major tenet of their faith. Putting those seeds in the ground, watching as Mother Earth, or the miracle of life, starts to take form! It's a promise that better things could be around the corner, but you've got to work for it, look for it, strive for it, if at all, and it surrounds you with hope! And as I toil in the warming Spring and Summer sun, it makes one feel so alive, no matter what the circumstances that caused one to make this their home.
And it is interesting. The effect that the results have on others. All positive. Even the naysayers, as they walk past with their friends and say "Hey, look, it's Martha Stewart, planting posies, ha ha ha," but, a little later, when they're alone… it's "hey (in a pitch slightly higher than a whisper) can you slip me one of those bright flowers so I can it to my girl… or my mom?"
That's it in a nutshell. Watching the Marigolds come up, grow their first buds, seeing just how long into the Fall they'll survive. Come on, it's just a bit of frost. And the Dianthus plant, I was told would only be an annual. However, a book in our library told me how to get them through the winter outside. On our unit, I have shaped the gardens in the shape of our Pennsylvania keystone, as homage as to who really owns the ground that I take such care of. Pennsylvania, home to my family for 250 years! So our E Unit garden blooms with the hope that it instills to others, a small piece of normalcy in an otherwise environment that sometimes is preoccupied with despair, a reminder that good things cannot be taken for granted. Thank you.