Are you a fair weather gardener?

Original email to subscribers: 1/3/23.
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Fair-weather gardening is a term that came to mind for me yesterday when a member of the gym showed up for class having severed the tendon in his thumb only days before.

So he’s wearing a splint and had surgery to help keep his compromised digit in one piece.

I’m like ‘What’s up?’

‘It’s pretty bad… but i’ll just use my other hand’

Gobsmacked. I was stunned.

Fair -weather gardeners only get out there when the conditions are perfect.

This particular go-getter is the exact opposite of that.

I work with alllllllll kinds of people here at the gym, at all different points in their life.
Their resilience to adversity is up or down depending on what’s going on for them, which is totally understandable.

But consistently, fair-weather gardeners disappear and reappear without a word.

Something happens, they’re out. It’s easy again, they’re back in.
Life’s constant misgivings direct their energy.
If their thumb was sliced, it could be weeks before I’d see them again, and It would be completely reasonable.

This was me for many years. With gardening and everything else.

It’s sunny; I plant it out. I’m feeling good, doing all the things.
Then it’s windy; the garden gets overgrown and the weed battle begins.
One afternoon of sun and I cut back all the growth and expose all the soil to prepare to mulch.

It rains. I don’t mulch. Weeds grow in the gaps.

The cycle repeats.

You plant out your tender little seedlings…

Then you sever your thumb.

…that was extreme, but it’s also life.



It’s a kick in the pants when you least expect it, and you can either throw your hands up and give up or double down and push through.

Building up my gardening resilience changed the game for me.

I stuck to a schedule.
I gamified gardening with small achievable goals.
And I found reward in telling everyone I knew about the constant battle I was undertaking. The Wins! The Losses! (People who matter are there for it all.)



I only pushed my comfort zone a little at the start, and with tiny bits of effort and lots of patience.

But, alas!
These days, the conditions outside don’t really have a say about whether I’ll be out there or not.
My feelings don’t tend to get in the way of my task at hand like they use to.

My question to you - are you a fair-weather gardener when it comes to going to the gym?

Do you only train when the conditions are perfect?