Why I Started a Small Garden During Radiation

Radiation gave me a calendar full of appointments, a treatment notebook and the odd feeling that time belonged to other people. After surgery, every hour seemed tied to pathology results, parking at the hospital or lying in bed while fatigue settled over me. Still, I wanted one corner of my life that did not ask me to be brave, useful or brave again.

Why I started a small garden during radiation, and what it taught me, was not originally a grand wellness plan. It began with three pots beside my back door on a suburban Brisbane block. The subtropical humidity and sudden summer storms made the idea slightly ridiculous, which may be why it felt manageable. I could tend a pot, even when tending an entire body seemed impossible.

Treatment Took Over My Calendar

When my care team recommended radiation after surgery, I reacted as though I had been handed somebody else’s timetable. I knew the practical details: daily sessions, the marked area of skin, the possibility of fatigue and the need to protect the treated side from sunlight. I did not know how I would make ordinary time feel ordinary again.

At our public oncology unit, I became familiar with the strange choreography of treatment. I learned which parking spots were shaded, which nurses recognised my name and how quickly a small appointment could consume half a day. Radiation itself was oddly quiet. I lay there, listened to music and watched the clock, while the machine moved with mechanical patience.

The hardest part was the recovery between appointments. My body became the centre of every calculation: How tired was I? Would the skin tolerate my shirt? Could I manage the stairs? Even supermarket shopping required a route and a backup plan. The garden offered a different measure. Instead of asking whether I was getting better, it asked whether I had watered the basil.

A Tiny Patch of Green

I started with three containers: one for herbs, one for leafy greens and one for cherry tomatoes that had probably been over-optimistic about their pot. I bought potting mix, a small trowel and a pair of gardening gloves that made me feel reassuringly professional. My council’s green-waste collection provided the compost, while my neighbour supplied an empty compost bin.

The local weather became part of the project. Brisbane’s late-summer storms could flood a container in minutes, and the humidity made watering an early-morning affair. I learned to check the forecast before deciding whether a plant needed water or merely another dramatic-looking leaf. Australian sun safety also became non-negotiable: hat, sunscreen and shade.

At the Carseldine farmers market one Saturday, I bought healthy seedlings rather than the sad supermarket lettuce I usually tolerated. The coriander was enthusiastic, the Thai basil was already leaning towards the edge of its pot and the tomato seedlings looked capable of starting a small rebellion. Carrying them home on the bus felt like bringing home three optimistic futures.

Learning to Tend Within Limits

In the first weeks, I gardened with the optimism of someone who had not yet understood radiation fatigue. A short visit became an hour. Digging exposed skin that had become tender, and bending over made the treated area pull uncomfortably beneath my clothes. By the second week, watering the plants was enough.

I moved my routine to the cooler parts of the day and accepted that some tasks needed another person. My oncology team had told me to report new symptoms and ask before increasing physical activity, so I stopped treating the garden like a private challenge. Wearing gloves for potting mix also made sense while my immune system was recovering.

One practical worry was shingles, particularly the vaccine discussion relevant to people over fifty. I read this shingles vaccine resource, took notes and spoke with my GP about my own age, health history and treatment timing. Having a specific question made the conversation easier, and the final decision belonged with my clinician rather than a frightened internet search at midnight.

The Patience of Small Things

I planted coriander, basil, spring onions and two tomato plants that seemed determined to prove the saying that small gardens produce large weeds. The spring onions sprouted first. Nothing about them was beautiful, but seeing green shoots in soil made the future feel tangible in a way that appointments did not.

Not every plant survived. The first tomato wilted, and I took its failure personally for almost two days. The basil bolted when temperatures climbed, while a pot of lettuce bolted so thoroughly it looked decorative. My garden did not provide the steady progress I had expected, but it gave me a place to practise tolerating imperfect results.

The lesson was not that gardening cured cancer. It was that care can be repetitive, seasonal and sometimes disappointing without being meaningless. I learned to water before the soil looked desperate, remove dead leaves without drama and accept that recovery rarely follows a straight line. The garden showed me progress in the loosest possible form: another morning spent tending something alive.

Help That Arrived at the Gate

The garden also made it easier to receive help. When I could no longer manage a full basket of laundry, friends arrived with washing, meals and offers that sounded simple until I tried to say yes. One friend drove me to treatment and stayed for coffee afterwards. Another friend walked my dog when my energy vanished.

Readers of my blog sent messages about their own treatment gardens, balcony tomatoes and healing rituals. Their stories mattered because cancer can make ordinary life feel private and strange. The contact page became a place where that conversation could continue, a quiet reminder that no one has to interpret the experience entirely alone.

I tried not to make receiving help a competitive activity. People brought seedlings, garden gloves and practical jokes. I traded seedlings for bread and made enough basil pesto to fill several unlabelled containers. Support worked best when it had room for imperfection, including my habit of forgetting which pot held which herb.

Keeping the Good Parts

I began photographing the garden alongside my treatment notes. Soon I could see the parallel story: hospital parking, radiation marks, new leaves and watering cans arranged on the back step. The photographs captured more than plants. They showed me returning to the same doorway with a changed body and a future still available.

The best reminders were the least medically impressive. A green thumbprint on a clay pot, the smell of wet earth, herbs in an omelette and the sound of rain hitting the container lid. I recorded those details because memory has a tendency to tidy treatment into a neat sequence, while the lived version included boredom, headaches, good days and small comic disasters.

I also chose a cheerful tote for treatment days from the blog’s small shop. It held my notebook, water bottle and dosing reminders without looking like medical equipment. I liked that it carried an identity larger than my diagnosis. The garden, my writing and the people around me had become parts of the same life, not interruptions from it.

A Garden for the Years Ahead

When my radiation finished, I did not feel dramatically restored. There was no ceremonial morning when fatigue simply vanished. I simply noticed that I could spend longer outside, walk farther and sometimes forget to check the clock. The garden remained through that transition, quietly demanding attention without asking me to prove I was cured.

The seasons changed its meaning. Summer brought heat, storms and ambitious tomatoes. Winter reduced my routine to watering, pruning and waiting. Each year held another cycle of planting, losing, composting and beginning again. I never became an expert, but I became someone who noticed.

The practical takeaway is to protect one small, repeatable task, accept help with the demanding parts and measure progress in ways that fit the energy you actually have. A watered pot, a conversation with a friend and one ordinary morning can be enough evidence that life still has roots.