Digging In
My Foray into Food Gardening, Nature, and the Tao
This spring, I am embarking on something with my Fort Collins family that I’ve long dreamed about but never truly committed to, namely, planting my first full-fledged food garden.
We’re not talking about a few herbs on a bedroom windowsill or a lonely tomato in a pot. I mean getting my hands dirty, tilling soil, studying compost, praying for rain, and learning to listen to plants the way a musician listens for notes between sounds.
For me, this is more than just gardening. It’s a spiritual return to a long-held Taoist rite of passage.
Like most returns, this isn’t entirely new. The seed had been planted years ago in Teakwood Heights, the neighborhood where I grew up in Columbus, Ohio. Behind our modest home stretched a wooded area bursting with life—ferns, squirrels, mossy logs, birdsong, and a meandering stream teeming with crawdads and tadpoles. That stream wasn’t just a playground. It was my first glimpse into how ecosystems work, how water sustains life, and how the world thrives when left to its own natural rhythms.
It’s only now, decades later, I realize how deeply that green world imprinted itself on me. The Tao was there. Flowing in the current, rustling through leaves. “The great Tao flows everywhere,” Lao Tzu writes. “All things depend on it for life, and it does not refuse them.” That was the Tao speaking through cattails and crawdads.
This year, I’m bringing that wisdom into my new garden. Raised beds. Kale. Tomatoes. Thai basil. Sugar snap peas. Blackberries. Collards. Even Watermelon. Each one a humble miracle, pushing up through the soil not with force, but with patience. Gardening has taught me that food isn’t born in a grocery store. It’s coaxed from the earth. It’s a dialogue between seed and sun. Between labor and letting go.
I have always been drawn to plants. My favorite houseplant has long been the cactus—independent, unfussy, and Taoist in temperament. It thrives in harsh conditions, asks for little, and guards its own energy fiercely.
But food gardening is a different dance. You don’t just set it and forget it. You must partner with nature. You must pay attention. Water, yes—but not too much. Sunlight, yes—but not scorching. Prune. Harvest. Taste. Wait. Repeat.
Food gardening is where Taoist philosophy becomes tactile. You learn to follow the seasons, to bend with the wind rather than fight it, to let nature lead and you follow. “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”
That line from Lao Tzu will play like a mantra in my head every time I’m out there tying up a tomato vine or handpicking pests off kale leaves. In a world obsessed with speed, food gardening reminds me that slowness isn’t laziness—it’s wisdom.
The I Ching echoes this truth in Hexagram 24, Fu, or Return. It speaks of cycles—of going back to what is essential, of starting again. Gardening, in its deepest form, is the sacred act of returning. Returning to soil. To food. To something deeply human and yet older than humanity itself.
But this is also about the future. Our global food systems are strained. Climate change, monoculture farming, chemical overuse, and supply chain instability are signals that we must grow differently. More locally. More intuitively. More regeneratively. My small garden isn’t going to solve the global food crisis, but it’s a start. It’s my declaration of interdependence. And it’s delicious.
There’s something wildly empowering about eating food you’ve grown with your own hands. That kale doesn’t taste like store-bought kale. It tastes like sunlight and soil and self-reliance. It tastes like Tao.
So yes, the Chocolate Taoist is now a gardener. A grower of greens. A humble student of the soil. And when I bite into a tomato warm from the vine, I feel something ancient rise up in me. A memory of Teakwood Heights. A whisper from the stream. A smile from the Tao itself.
Because in every garden, there is a cosmos. And in every leaf, a lesson.
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Diamond Michael Scott
aka The Chocolate Taoist
I miss gardening. I remember that taste, of food fresh from the soil, gracious for the nurture, unspoiled by preservatives, no artificial coloring, grown near where it consumed, and cared for as family. All of that contributes to the taste--and to the nourishment.
How wonderful for you! We used to have two very large vegetable gardens and grew all sorts of things we loved. We had usually around 24 tomato plants, especially loved the cherry tomatoes. Where we are now we do not have the space but we do have multiple potted flowers and some herbs growing. Looking forward to updates!