The View From Outside

What do they see when they look at my garden?  Rich black soil pebbled with iron, light fluffy loam atop the soil, rich and fragrant, a tender blanket of straw to protect against winter frost…  raked over to reveal sturdy green shoots in a blanket of growth…

What does he see when he looks at my garden?  Patches of untended soil, dry and crumbly, powdered in it’s neglect, bordering up to deep black sopping wet soil turned by long worms that consume and fertilize in the same motion, empty landscape of contrasting soils, withering lonely bushes scattered through out.

What do I see?  Weeds.  Mixed in with glorious fragrant peonies.  I see tall yellow dandilions hidden amongst the powerful bright happy sunflowers. I see trailing twining choking vines wrapping round my carefully tended flowering trees… and a scattering of brown dead things left behind by my pruning and plucking and pinching.  I see tall flowering vegetable plants, wildly growing herbs, and basic marigolds amongst the variegated grasses and the lavendar mixed with the Asiatic Lillies mixed with sexy Gladioli.  I see both the tipping top heavy flowers uprooted by those sneaky moles, I see the green buds on the tree limbs above the scattered dirt of a chipmunks rummaging.  I see the lacy beauty in a leaf partially consumed by a caterpillar awaiting his turn to become a cocoon.

What is real?  Which view is truth?  Which view is most practical? Do we have to vote? Why can’t they all be just the same garden?

If you don’t like it… you can leave.  But you cannot change my garden.  Only I can do that.  The thing is, I don’t think, really, that I want to change it. 

I think… really… that I like my garden.  Or at least, I like the way the roots are coming out.  The pulling of them is horrid but the absence of them is mighty… and I don’t want to stop now.  I like this thing I’m creating out of nothing but rot and trash.  I like this thing I’m creating out of your fertilizer, out of your water, out of your sunshine.  See what you started? Now watch me finish it…

Watch my garden grow, and then come in and see the beauty in the mix of things I’ve grown… I’ll prepare a special place just for you to sit.

Guest Gardener

Sometimes when you can’t quite figure out where to start, or maybe which particular plant is best for your zone, or if maybe you don’t even know if your soil is ready for gardening, you turn to someone who has done the work already, someone who has a little dirt under their nails, a little sweat on their brow and a blister or two to show for the work.  You look at their garden and see the things you like, and also the things that don’t quite fit your taste, and you ask them, “how do I do this?”

You must dig in your garden, deep, until you get to all the roots.  Sometimes you need to dig alone, for days.  Other times, you want help and company so you can fling the mud at someone or smush it until it’s dust and your frustrations, anger, fears, and pain are dissolved too.  I challenge you to dig deeper my friend.  We’re all here to support you as you do.  Don’t be afraid.  Be honest.  Be truthful.  Be YOU. Just begin with you.  The rest will come.

Those were the words my Guest Gardener had to say.  Dig.  Don’t fear.  Be true.  Begin at the beginning.  Have you ever heard better suggestions for redoing your garden?  I think not.

My dearest Guest Gardener, with you standing by to hand over your favorite tools for me to borrow, I’ll surely be able to plant something that blooms year round.

And for my kaba who feels connected to me through this gardening project? Yeah, it’s your strength that I carry in my heart…

Today weeds, tomorrow (or next year) tall strong sunflowers.

Immersed in Fertilizer

Sometimes there is nothing else to do, except to just accept that fertilizer, stinky and choking and gag-worthy, is the foundation for growth.

I try…

We speak, we falter and then change the subject and underneath we are both thinking about the weeds but ignoring them for the beauty of the flowers.

We share, a connection rebuilt, a bridge shored up, a paddle retrieved from the creek… and even in the tenseness there is comfort.

But I must say… why was I the one to apologize?  Why were YOU the one to nod your head, sigh, and tell me that forgiveness was a process.  Do you not, will you ever, is it possible… that you could see your own forest in spite of the trees?

Why is it that I can point out the storm, coming in from the south, and you can point to the clear sky in the north and say, “Well, if it wern’t clear there, the storm wouldn’t come” or “There is a breeze offshore created by the pull of the moon and the shifting global economy so we should expect a lot of storms and be prepared to meet them”.

Could you never admit that your storm, your fury unleashed, your fragile climate so uncontrolled, is at the root of the damage done?  That possibly my original garden plan was not up to the standards required, but that it was the storm that destroyed the garden, and not the flimsy design?

Anger wells underneath the frail tenuous peace… uncertainty bubbles like a slow simmer of toxic chemicals over a bunsen burner, looking so much like a healing chicken soup but smelling so much like the regurgitated remains of ecoli infested vegetation… deadly.

And you sleep, well satisfied, having decided that your garden is just fine the way it is… while I stomp around my fresh fill dirt, kicking at rocks and cursing at the tunneling rodents and wondering why it is that I have to even bother caring so much.  T’would be so much easier to just let it all go.

 

When all else fails, try try again…

…or just burn the fucker down.

I went home… I slept in my bed… alone. And I thought it felt awful, tense and stressfull.  I was trapped in there and I hated it and I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it again… but then I came back again anyway just because I really did want to devote myself  to us… and I woke you up and asked you to sleep in the bed with me… just to be there, not for anything other than the sake of being spouses.  And it was good and sweet.  And I wanted it to go on… but then it just all went flying out the window. 

Too Much Fertilizer burns out the soil completely.  I’m burnt.

Nothing is growing here in this garden and the root of that one weed last week disrupted soil all over the entire garden, dropping the ornamental shrubs one at a time leaving just destruction and waste in it’s path.  Damn those weeds and that cheap store bought fertilizer.  Never again…

I hate how quickly the sticker bush weeds grow.  One minute you get a small fragile self twining vine with soft hair like coverings and the beginnings of a bloom… and the next minute it’s a full blown stinky, prickly, seeded and self fertilizing plant.

I rip it from the soil, pulling it out, roots and all.  It stubbornly hangs on as ferociously as it can, and then gives way.  Just like my sprit and faith… willful but giving way every time.

To one of my gardeners, thank you for the air mattress, the comforter, the wine. Thank you for listening, empathizing, offering suggestons… thank you for the house keys.  You may never know how much that means to me… But God does.  And so do I. 

And to the gardener who helps me plant the pretties- thanks for being my “family”… my “person”!  I couldn’t do this without you.

Truth

When someone says, “This is the most important thing to focus on” I have, in the past, always agreed.  Yes, mm-hmm, that’s right, yes, that thing IS the most important one.  And all the energy I’ve been spending on the other thing is a waste of time, is so glaringly wrong, and how could I have not seen that?

I was showing my messy overgrown garden to someone and they pointed out a particular corner that was looking particularly pathetic.  “Look! That is where you should start. You definitely need to focus on that and then everything else will just come together.  See?”  I began to nod my head but then realized that I didn’t have to agree.  This is MY garden.  No one else knows how to work it but me.

I think I need to start clearing out all the weeds first.  I sort of started weeding a couple of years ago but it was in a random aimless halfhearted kind of way.  I pulled out one over there, a few in the middle, and raked up some of the soil.  It was boring and tedious and the damn weeds just came right back.  I finally began reading a really great gardening book and I am still reading it, but slowly I’m gathering up ideas and plans, choosing what actions to take during which season.

If I agree with someone else’s idea of where to start, then I’m just doing the grunt work of building someone elses garden.  I want to work on my own garden.  I am going to have a garden full of peace and light, full of small hidden treasures and some well chosen anchor plants and borders.  It will be lovely… I can see it already in my heart.  But first, for me, is pulling weeds.

This is gonna take some work.