By Lauren Bock, ADVANCE CONTRIBUTOR
Soon after the Lifestyle Medicine class I wrote about last week, my new friends Dave and Kaye started joining me and others on the Canal and Heritage Paths in Fredericksburg for a weekly “Walk with a Doc” on Tuesday evenings. Walking was nothing new for Dave, who has long enjoyed his daily walks home from Hyperion after his morning coffee. Rather, Walk with a Doc served as an opportunity for us to catch up on his blood pressure, stories about their grandchildren, and upcoming travels.
During one of those walks, I mentioned that I was stepping down from my jobs at a preventive cardiology clinic to take time for myself and my family, and to spend more time in my garden.
Kaye looked at me with a wary eye and a dose of maternal compassion.
“The garden is not all it’s cracked up to be,” she said. “Take it from me, just buy your produce at the farmers market and enjoy this time with your family.”
My garden had been a work in progress since 2023. For more than two years, I spent countless hours designing and dreaming of a bountiful sanctuary while oversized loads of unfinished compost cooked in a heap of steamy goodness in the space designated for my future garden. Unbeknownst to me, that pile harbored weeds that became a daunting, 1,600 square-foot, waist-high nightmare once it was spread.
After consulting with a friend who had a little more gardening experience, I decided to scrap all hope of a garden in 2025. Instead, I spent the next year solarizing the weeds that had rooted themselves into my self-made compost disaster. It was the first of many blows to my gardening ambitions.
But the garden finally began to take shape this past summer. I spent hours optimistically watering seedlings to combat the early summer drought and taking nighttime walks through the garden to monitor for pests.
The result? A bounty of marigolds with a mere handful of edible treats—and my neighbor cheekily asking, “What are you growing…other than marigolds?”
Still, a few of my efforts paid off after a while. Sort of.
Fruitless blackberry and raspberry vines hung on trellises. Heirloom tomatoes were scattered on the ground, half-eaten. The strawberries displayed daily evidence of squirrel nibbles. It felt like I had an occasional win amid a series of losses.
But those wins were lovely. The sun-gold cherry tomatoes tasted like juicy candy. The jade cucumbers were crisp and splendid. The cantaloupes ripened in the sun such that I could smell them as I walked through the gate. Unfortunately, the squirrels were soon attracted to the ripening fruits, too. The $64 Tomato had become my reality.
By the end of August, I had grown weary of the sun, legs covered in mosquito bites and a chronic lather of sunscreen across my face and chest. Defeated by the squirrels, I began spending less time in the garden, avoiding the reminder of my unmet expectations.
While walking with Kaye and Dave on another balmy Tuesday evening, I mentioned that a prolific oregano groundcover had taken over my flower beds. Kaye agreed to liberate me from my excess and transplant some of the oregano to her own garden.
She and Dave came to the house the next day with shovels and boxes, ready to fill their truck with my “generosity.” As I pointed to the offending groundcover, Kaye grinned, looked at me with that maternal gaze again, and asked, “Are you sure this is oregano?”
It turned out to be the same noxious weed that she regularly pulled from her own garden: common ground ivy.
“Maybe you should stick with medicine,” she said. I had to admit that perhaps she was right.
But I still wasn’t ready to give up altogether, because the problem wasn’t my gardening per se; it was my failure to consider the Satisfaction Equation.
Put simply, we’re most likely to find satisfaction when our outcomes exceed our expectations, so it’s important, especially when starting out, to be like Goldilocks. Not too much, not too little, but just right. And we have to have reasonable ways, and reasonable standards, for measuring our outcomes.
As a first year gardener, I could have set the bar a lot lower. Let myself see a single tomato as a success. Celebrate my victories, learn from my mistakes.
Looking back, spending what felt like an eternity in the garden was therapeutic. The garden wasn’t a failure. Rather, it became a source of perspective. A place to reflect. To cry. To curse. To rethink my “why.”
Why did I leave a career that I loved? Why is my self-value tied to my sense of productivity? Why do I allow others to define my worth?
Sometimes we need a break, even from the things we love. The plants we have nourished from seedlings. The relationships that are strained. The constant-grind career.
Stepping back gives us time to reset. To pause and ponder. To rest and recover. To reboot.
When the time is right, we can re-engage with a renewed sense of self. A better understanding of what we want. What we need. What we value. What brings satisfaction and purpose.
Time away allows us to zoom-out. To see the bigger picture. To appreciate the zig-zags instead of the straight line. And to happily pay $5 for a pint of blueberries at the farmers market.
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Lauren Bock is a certified Physician Assistant. From 2021 until 2025, she led a Preventative Cardiology program with Virginia Cardiology Consultants and Oracle Heart and Vascular. She was the first provider in the Fredericksburg area to be board-certified in Lifestyle Medicine. You can contact her at her Lifestyle Medicine practice Be Well.
