Quite often life inside the garden metaphorically mimics the evolution of our real-life’s script outside the garden as well. Failures, hopes, illness and recovery, chaos and calm, regrets, rewards and peace. All are acts in the dramas, comedies and tragedies performed each season on stages of soil and soul. Directing these transitional phases of garden life and real life is: Change. Authoring them is each of us. We choose that change which will facilitate the fading in and fading out of each act and keeps the story moving along to where the heroine rides off into the sunset (with a truckload of compost) or gets the guy (who’ll willingly do the grunt work without a single grunt); or sets the stage for a cliff-hanging sequel – “Gardening: The Never-ending Story”.
Thoreau wrote, “Things don’t change. We change”. Living through a wretched, oppressively hot summer and watching my plants wither and turn to parchment might make me question that logic. But, should I waste time and energy moaning and groaning about something over which I have no control – like the weather? Or make a change and bid adieu to the majority of my favorite…but persnickety, water-hungry little fusspots and incorporate more succulents and even more mulch? Maybe even see this as a chance to research more xeriscape gardening? Opting for change and abiding by it isn’t uncommon to gardeners. We do it every day, in every season, just so we can keep our hands in the dirt.
Life and Nature have this quirky little penchant for suddenly switching the signs and placing pitchforks on our road of good intentions. Which tine we chose to follow, or whether we just stand straddling the shaft with our fingers up our…er… in our ears, is dependent upon how much we want to continue the journey.
So here I stand in the garden precariously balancing on the handle of my own personal pitchfork. Usually at this time of year I’m evaluating my garden’s performance. Now, it’s my performance that’s coming under critical scrutiny. Since I have miles to go, plants to plant, edges to edge and an even longer journey of words and metaphors yet to write, I’m forced to seriously address what were once gentle nudges, but are now clarion calls, to make changes in my life if I want to continue pursuing both my love of gardening and my need to write.
I look at the forsythias, spireas, viburnums and rhododendrons encroaching upon the house because, once again, I put off lopping them back and now it’s too late in the season to expose fresh cut wood to bitter winter winds. About a dozen overgrown clumps of perennials had already started dying out in their centers last year and despite promises then, they still remain undivided this year. Deadheading of annuals stopped dead in its tracks. Now I’m hoping I’ll be able to collect at least half the seeds I want. There was way more weeds this year than I ever remembered. Taking over nearly every bare square inch of the garden and the paths despite layers of mulch, I just couldn’t keep up with pulling them on hands and snap, crackle and popping knees. Beds and borders seemed to expand overnight. Bully plants have gone unchecked and swallowed up the littler guys because I didn’t threaten the thugs often enough with drastic pruning. And all because there’s only 24 hours in a day. So many new priorities demanding my attention outside the garden, sleep taking up a good chunk, or hunched over the computer, writing - I’ve had precious few moments to spare for the garden.
When I see all that has become standard operating procedure to maintain a garden the size I’ve allowed mine to grow, I wonder if I’ve finally Peter Principled myself in my own garden? Bitten off more than I can chew and created not Linda Frank’s garden, but a Frankengarden! “Downsizing” was once a word only whispered for years behind rose petals and canna leaves. Now it’s shouting at me. “Simplify, simplify”, to quote Thoreau again. Live to fight/write/garden…another day. So, then, these are not mere promises or attempts at feigned resolutions. No. These are definitive, specific changes I’ve chosen to follow so I can keep playing in the dirt until there’s literally no play left in me.
I will make changes that will, hopefully, only have positive outcomes. Reorganizing my time and energies so that neither my garden nor my writing…nor most importantly…I suffer. I will pace myself according to my good days, good moments and spare time. Thus allowing my body the ability - and my mind the freedom - to still get my hands as dirty as I can. I’ll buy that smaller-capacity, lighter-weight wheelbarrow so I can at least haul one or two good loads of only dry compost or mulch. (It’s much lighter when it’s dry.) If it means stopping in the middle of a task, I will retreat inside on those hellishly hot days, until the temperature dips below 85º, and I no longer need tiny windshield wipers for my glasses. I will surrender my trusty, tattered baseball cap for a wide-brimmed covering, if only just for a quick dash to the mailbox. The sun is wonderful for plant growth, but disastrous for growth of skin cancers. One scare was more than enough, thank you. I will not lament my inability to no longer zip through a multitude of chores in half the time, nor spend endless hours in the garden long past sunset as I did when I was 30, 40 or…well…when I was younger.
No longer can I handle the overwhelming guilt of having to break the news to huddled masses of root bound, still–potted perennials, patiently and pathetically waiting behind the shed, that they’ll have to spend the winter in their pots, heeled in under a blanket of thick mulch till I can (hopefully) find them a permanent place for them in the garden next spring. To prevent that from happening again next season, I will, therefore, cut back on future purchases. I will cut back on purchases. I will cut back on purchases. I will cut back on….. (I figure if I say it often enough, even I might believe it.)
The time is also approaching (too darned fast if you ask me) when we must consider whether or not to move from our home of over 20 years. There’s a little thing arcing higher on the horizon called “retirement”. Oh, it’s a long ways off yet. But time passes before you know it and with this kind of change in your life, it’s never too soon to prepare. It’s a daunting enough task to think of selling our home and starting over again, but almost unthinkable for me to leave my garden. Yet, if faced with the reality of yanking my deep taproots from this present soil and plunking them down in new ground, I’m already starting the slow process of perceiving this change as an opportunity to create that smaller, more manageable garden I’m beginning to want – and need – more and more.
Pitchforks will appear in everyone’s path at one time or another. The older I get, it some times feels like I’m hurdling the entire tool shed. But being a gardener, affords me the advantage of (hopefully) navigating those impediments with a little more agility than others. As gardeners, we’ve all become so accustomed to inventing and accepting alternative approaches which will enable us not just to survive in pursuit of our passion - but to thrive - armed with new knowledge and maybe a new vision…had it not been for Change.
When I was a child, my mother, father, brother and I took many car trips. Bickering and fidgeting on the huge sofa that passed for the backseat in my father’s big old Chrysler, my brother and I sustained a barrage of complaints about how long it was taking to get where we were headed and would we like it when we got there? I remember my mother turning around in the front seat and over her shoulder she’d plead, “Instead of worrying about where you’re going, can’t you just sit back and enjoy the ride?”
Unlike the garden with its many seasons of life and opportunities for change, we only pass once through our innocent spring birth, gregarious youthful summer, accomplished adult autumn and wizened winter finale. If changes are necessary to continue our journey, then we must make them. Perhaps, even more importantly, we shouldn’t agonize over our final destination. But just enjoy the ride.
LINDA
Copyright© Linda M. Frank 2005 All Rights Reserved
Dear Readers,
This installment of GardenZone marks my column’s finale. My association with Farm & Garden has been a reward and a delight. Gardening will always be my great joy…but it’s a writer’s heart that beats within me. So, I’m following that beat and setting out to pursue writing on other roads. I hope to meet some of you again along the way. I’ll be the one with the laptop and the half-moon edger telling my tales to the plants at the edge of the path. Or anyone who’ll listen. Peace to you all, inside and outside the garden, LINDA.