Living in a Camper Turned Me Into a Feral Garden Witch
I’ve grown things in it.
I’ve killed things in it.
I’ve watched it flourish and I’ve watched it go full WWE smackdown on itself.
It’s been my personal chaos patch, sometimes cute, sometimes witchy, sometimes “the property value is getting nervous.”
Every spring I start strong, all hopeful and delusional like:
“THIS is the year. I’m gonna have my shit together. My garden will be thriving. I will be thriving.”
By June, the intrusive thoughts wander in like:
“Hey… wanna do something stupid?”
And historically, apparently I did.
Because this summer - in early recovery, unhinged but harmless,
I took the last FIVE bags of seeds I had and just…
dumped them all in the middle of the garden.
No plan.
No spacing.
No thought process whatsoever.
Just ✨MARIGOLDS✨ and trauma.
That’s the funniest part:
It wasn’t even a mix.
It was all goddamn MARIGOLDS.
Five bags.
Straight to the soil.
Like I was trying to summon a giant floral sun god.
And let me tell you something I deeply wish I didn’t know:
Do NOT sow marigolds like that.
Because those little fuckers?
Grow stems like TREE TRUNKS when they’re overcrowded.
I was out there bracing my feet like I was trying to uproot a redwood.
Grunting.
Sweating.
Asking myself why the hell I exist like this.
All because I was trying to “scare pests away.”
(WHICH WORKED, but I scared myself more.)
This garden has seen EVERY version of me:
the girl who tries too hard,
the girl who gives up completely,
the cryptid sprinkling seeds at 3 AM,
the one who drank,
the one who got sober,
and now the horticulture student casually throwing around words like “soil structure” and “biomass” like that’s normal behavior.
Then this year, something shifted.
Sobriety hits you weird sometimes... it hands you the urge to fix the shit you’ve avoided for literal years.
So I tilled it.
Like a whole woman.
Like a witch with a mission.
Like a horticulture student who no longer plants marigolds in a panic spiral.
And I planted crimson clover as a cover crop.
Not because I was spiraling.
Not because it was the only thing left in my seed box.
But because I actually understood what the soil needed.
And what I needed.
Healing.
Nutrients.
Patience.
A real do-over.
Somewhere between tilling and seeding and muttering to myself like the feral woodland druid I basically am now, it hit me:
For years, I let everything take over...
the weeds,
the marigolds,
the pests,
the mental health chaos,
the intrusive thoughts,
the depression,
the drinking.
And now?
I’m finally planting on purpose.
This little garden has been my mirror;
messy, wild, stubborn, resilient, and genuinely hard to kill.
It’s not perfect yet.
Neither am I.
But damn… we’re both recovering beautifully.
Soft.
Still dangerous.
Still a little feral.
And finally growing things that make sense.
