MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
It may already be the New Year, but it is not too late to firm up your New Year's resolution. All this week, we have been asking listeners for ideas on new things to add to your life this year, new hobbies. Today, the case for gardening.
MARJORIE RIVAL: My name is Marjorie Rival, and I'm from Bridgeport, Conn. My hobby is gardening. I started when I was a child staying with my grandparents in Grand-Bois(ph), Haiti, which is a space where it's covered with rainforest and trees. And from there, I learned how to cultivate the land, how to grow different type of foods.
Sometimes it feels like work, but most of the time, for me, it doesn't feel like because I feel like I'm part of nature.
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RIVAL: I think a lot of times being in an industrial world, you don't realize how much work goes into producing vegetables. I got a better appreciation just learning how to - not only just harvest things but also how to compose, how to weed things out, how to indentify different type of species around different places.
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RIVAL: Everything that you do requires a lot of patience. I - it requires a lot of discipline. And I've gotten to learn those skills while working in the garden with my grandparents. As you know, Haiti is tropical island, and it's hot 365 days a year. When you going through the season of planting, you have to wait a few months before those plants start to grow. And that takes a lot of patience. It takes a lot of hard work.
Even in between, you have to weed out some other weeds. You have to nurture the plant, provide them with compost and soil. And that part of gardening is also part of life. You also have to nurture yourself. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.