Activist Exhaustion and Monty Don

Just typing his name is soothing...

Do you know Monty Don? Listen for a minute and let me tell you about this British gardening series and what the heck it has to do with my activism.

Monty Don, Host, Gardeners’ World

I am a gardener. I grew up picking up rocks from the freshly tilled gardens in Arkansas, but I now live in Northwest Missouri with rich black dirt and almost no rocks—there’s a reason I’m surrounded by corn and beans. This region is meant to grow food and flowers.

And, I do grow veggies and flowers, but over the last few years, I focused more on the flowers than I have the vegetables which isn’t good for canning, but seems to work better with my schedule and my absolute exhaustion with politics.

*Before you suggest self-care and taking a break, just know that I can’t. My brain doesn’t work that way and I am in an area without a whole lot of folks who can step in if I take a break—it’s just out of the question.

Head down. Get to work. Keep going.

I ran for office in 2022, but I started my campaign in 2020. I started working with Moms Demand before that in 2018 and I really got involved in politics in 2016 and I bet you can figure out why.

So, in the grand scheme of things, I’ve only poked my head out for eight years, but those years have been absolutely packed with panic and grief and work and children and weddings and grandchildren and campaigning and transitioning to life after teaching and activism. So much activism.

I work from home and that became an issue because it meant my work was available all of the time and that’s what I did. I started at 6:45 am and cleaned and cooked and gardened but always had my phone and my laptop and earbuds with someone riling me up. I worked vacations and ballgames and events. I thought about work and thought about thinking about work and how I shouldn’t do this to myself much less my family, but if not me, who, right? Who else?

And then, I found Gardeners’ World and Monty Don about 4 years ago.

I was originally watching the British show on YouTube, but I was hooked. HOOKED. The host, Monty Don reminds me of a gentle Mr. McGregor. He gardens like him, but he would never try to kill a gentle bunny for eating his lettuce—he would put a net over his veggies and probably throw out his scrap veggies to the naughty hare to keep him at bay.

My coneflowers

I turn on Gardeners’ World almost every night when it’s just me in the living room—when everyone has gone to bed. As soon as the theme song starts, I am relieved and the stress sort of slides off my back. I can unclench my jaw. I can relax. Through Monty Don, I’ve learned how to propagate and prune. He shows me tricks to getting a second bloom of delphiniums or when to plant my bulbs. I never used grit in my containers before him and I didn’t know I could grow squash vertically.

I took my cues from Monty and started planting native flowers and stopped mowing part of my lawn to let it go feral and hopefully bring back butterflies. I planted more trees and I let the part of the grass I mow get longer between mowing. I’m planning my first greenhouse right now—my husband is super happy about building it as we speak :)

But, what has Monty Don done for my activism? He helps me keep going. He taught me that planting and tending to gardens is also work and I can do it without feeling guilty for stepping away from politics and that work.

If you can’t stop, but you are exhausted, at least you can put in the work on something that is not likely to be trolled or condemned. I can rake and weed and plant in peace—no one calls me a fat bitch or a commie while I’m in overalls in my side garden.

Monty lets me know that I am still hard at work, but it’s the kind that clears your head and let’s you know that there is something beautiful about this place—Missouri can be tiresome and the most of the politicians in this state seem dead set on harming me family and my neighbors, but the black dirt isn’t trying to do anything but give me joy.

The old wheelbarrow I plant close to the highway

My gardening also brings others joy. I plant near the highway so folks see it when they pass. I decorate my porch with massive plants that make it almost impossible to sit on my chairs without knocking over the delicate balance of pots and tendrils and stands. I have a hammock swing that my granddaughter sits in while she eats her breakfast on sleepover mornings. When I see her spin in that swing, and watch her decide which flowers she’s going to cut and take home to mommy, I know things can be right in the world.

It doesn’t mean I will ever step back from the fight I am presented each day, but during the spring and summer and early fall, I find relief in the flowers and sustenance in the veggies.

My advice? Take a minute and turn on Monty Don. Learn something and then apply it. Activism and gardening are much the same—the acknowledgement that everything is not as we would have it at all times, but we work toward progress.

We clip and prune and plant and grow. We watch the seeds of our work grow and we water them to sustain them. We build on last year and we expand this year. We deadhead and blossom. Everything in its season. Beauty in the work.

~Jess