This morning, I sat on the front steps sipping my morning tea looking out at my little garden I love. Sometime ago when I wrote my Things I Do and Things I Don’t Do list, gardening fell squarely on the things I don’t do side. For all intents and purposes, I still don’t. A couple of years ago, I nearly lost my mind and uprooted our beautiful, healthy, 12 year old irises to plant a food garden. If you know me, you know this is funny bordering on insane. Because really, my indoor plants are an evolutionary experiment: survival of the fittest. I do well to throw an ice cube in the pot now and then (a trick my sister taught me).
It was also an insane idea because the many places of my life require, in truth, probably more than I actually have to give so though fresh garden veggies would be awesome, I probably ought not give my energy toward growing plants when I sometimes find it hard to grow children or my marriage.
I am no gardener.
Case and point: While Evan was in VBS, Cara and I decided to weed the front flower bed at the church. Everyone walking by commented on a beautiful flower growing there. Inevitably, they would ask me what it was (I had no idea). But I marveled at these beautiful flowers that had survived the early summer excavation to shore up the building`s foundation beneath it. Amazing, I thought. Now that’s a hearty flower. Before I could contemplate any deeper meaning ;), one of the ladies from our church came out and marvelled with me about their beauty. Then she told me she planted them. In July. They are annuals. A rookie mistake. Gardening is not in my wheelhouse.
But this little front garden/landscaping we put in lastsummer is manageable. I have come to understand just a little of why real gardeners say gardening is something of a spiritual, meaningful, experience for them. I have watered and weeded and waited for these plants to grow and bloom. Healthy growth takes time and attention, changing seasons and good soil. When hail came last year, I nearly ran outside and sat with my favorites under tarps to protect them. I held my breath to see if the worst hit would make it. Sure enough – they all did.
Here is what my little garden is teaching me now:
Gently wait. If you can’t wait gently, at least wait.
I have learned the hard way that grabbing scissors and cutting away what looks dead too early will stunt growth and beauty. The mullet on my potentilla testifies to this.
Potentilla with a mullet
I have learned that pruning away at the right time brings health and luster that would not have come if I had not trimmed away the fading branches. My Korean Lilac (my not-so-secret favorite) is reaping the benefits of my judicious trimming because it doesn’t have to put its energy toward the wrong thing (seeding).
I am learning rash choices that don’t account for the future will be costly down the road. I really wanted a Mugo Pine but the garden centre didn’t have a miniature at the time. So I asked the guy if I could just keep trimming off new growth once it reaches the size I want it. He shrugged his sixteen year old shoulders and said, “Oh yeah.” I didn’t get the sense he really knew what he was talking about but I liked his answer and I bought it. A few weeks after it was planted in a 4x4 spot in our garden, I saw a full grown Mugo Pine in a friend’s backyard. It’s an enormous tree. This little-gonna-be-mighty Mugo also teaches me to be careful who I invite to give answers to the questions of life I am wrestling with. Maybe even more importantly, to not simply look for answers that I want to hear.
I am learning that even when I nurture and care for something, it might bloom in ways totally unexpected and not always to my liking. My hydrangea has always been the most fragile. I have nursed it, watched and hoped it would become beautiful and healthy. Turns out, now that it is becoming heartier, it is ugly. The flowers are green! Green? I don’t actually want any green flowers in my little garden. I have enough green, thank you very much. Can’t you be yellow or white or pink or blue or purple? I don’t care. Just not green. What to do with this plant that I have nourished and protected only to find it isn’t anything like what I want? I read somewhere there are special techniques to change the color of a hydrangea’s blossoms. Possibly. Seems kind of wrong. Truthfully, I am tempted to rip it out and start over. Spend $30 and an hour and plant something that actually looks beautiful to me. Maybe I will yet, I’m not sure. When Jason used to frown at the pile of yellow and orange skittles I threw in the garbage, I would say “It is candy. I am eating it for pleasure. Why would I eat candy I don’t even like?” But I have a hard time letting go of my ugly hydrangea because I have given a little of myself to it and feel responsible for it, I think.
As I sat on my front steps this morning and thought about what I am learning in my fumbling gardening attempts, I realized they apply to my “real life” too. I came away with this self-insight that stuck:
I have always had a hard time giving up on things, even when they don’t please me or bring me pleasure. Especially if I have invested any bit of myself in it/them. I don’t have a clue if this is helpful or unhelpful to my life or others. It means my green hydrangea gets to keep on living and the Mugo Pine stays poised in its place to choke out my beloved Korean Lilac – the thing of beauty I actually LOVE in my garden. And I just wait. Unable to make a decision because I care about that little pine and the hydrangea too – even as its green blossoms continue to irritate me.
For now, I wait and water and hope.
