1. Try something new:
Are you a rose lover? An orchid expert? Or maybe you only grow edibles. At any rate, diversity is a good thing. Take a journey — however brief — down another avenue of gardening. Or just try growing a new, cool plant you’ve never seen before.
2. Learn to like spiders (or, at least tolerate them):
Repeat after me…”Spiders are our friends. Spiders are our friends.” Don’t automatically reach for the Raid or rolled-up newspaper every time you see eight legs and a bunch of eyes staring back at you. Remember, the earth would be overrun with pests like flies, fleas and much more were it not for our fanged friends. If a spider or other relatively harmless bug gets in the house, try carefully catching it in a small container and releasing it outside before instinctively smashing it to bits. Or, if you’re like me, allow a few out-of-the-way spiders to hang around. They’ll keep your fungus gnat and earwig problems at bay, for sure. (Learn to identify the more harmful, however, and kill them if you spot one.)
3. Learn to tolerate reptiles (including snakes):
Again, these guys can be very helpful in the garden; they eat a lot of insects; some of the snakes will eat rodents and a few even eat slugs and snails. Again, learn the poisonous ones and get rid of those. While even the poisonous ones are beneficial in the garden, you don’t want to accidently step on a copperhead while tending your plants.
4. Don’t beat yourself up for failures:
I guarantee you that even Martha Stewart has accidentally killed plants. Many times, a plant death isn’t even the grower’s fault-plants, like the rest of us, eventually die. If the plant’s demise was your doing, learn from your mistakes and move on.
5. Pass on your knowledge:
If you have children, try to get them interested in gardening. Food plants are good-and most kids will at least try their vegetables if they are the ones that grew them. And since home-grown vegetables taste much better than store-bought, you might even get them to like eating vegetables!
6. Give Something Back:
Participate in or start up a community garden in your area. Got too much of some vegetable - or vegetables? Take the excess to the local food bank. Gardening is at least twice as much fun when someone else benefits from your labor of love.