New Friendships at the Garden

After weeks of visiting the garden, learning how to plant seeds in rows, how to take care and turn over the soil and what to expect when the plants actually start to appear, I have not only learned how to become a gardener, but I can honestly say I have made a lot of valuable friendships.  I tried not to have any regrets throughout my senior year but now I am left with one small one.  I regret not meeting any of my classmates earlier in my college career.  I guess this is not necessarily a regret, but I am so lucky to have been surrounded by such a wonderful group of people, bonding over the creation of our garden.  Throughout my career at Lehigh, I can honestly say that I have never really enjoyed the company of every single person in my class until now.  Usually, all relationships ended as soon as we departed the building, and a simple "hello" in passing would suffice in the later years.  It was not until environmental imagination and until beginning this garden that I really have felt a connection with my classmates that extends passed our academics.  I truly consider my fellow gardeners to be my new friends and I think that something that is so important is that we have created this friendship around the basis of nature and the creation of our plots.  We all entered this project hesitant about what to expect and I know that I am now not only a beginning and better gardener, but I am also leaving this project with a new friend group.  I honestly wish I would have taken this class sooner.  I'm actually getting emotional thinking about this coming to an end.  I know that a few of us will be around to maintain the garden, but I know that I will miss the actual social aspect that was created around the naivety that most of us had when beginning this process. Yes, I did learn a great deal about gardening, but more importantly, I spent the remainder of my senior year with people I would have never become close with if it weren't for the garden.  I just wanted to say that I appreciate each and every one of you, and I am so happy to have shared this process with you guys.  I think that sometimes in life, especially in college, people conform to certain friend groups based on the social settings they put themselves into, and for me, this garden allowed for me to meet new people and create new friendships.  Gardening itself is hard enough, and sometimes its even harder to adapt to new surroundings and make new friends, but when I move after grad school, I think it would be a really good idea to join some type of gardening group in hopes of making friends like I have in this class.  I appreciate everyones patience with this process and look at my classmates and hope to find their various qualities in myself someday.  This has been the best closure to my undergrad experience at Lehigh. Thank you all!