The Garden
A month after my then-husband moved out, I started building a garden. With the help of my then-landlord-now-dear-friend, we leveled the ground, laid pavers, installed a wooden edge and made beautiful custom raised beds in the back yard.
A mountain of dirt was dropped in the driveway and I shoveled all of it into the empty beds. My body ached as much as my heart. With each scoop I was letting go of a life, one I had carefully planned that just wasn’t working, and hoping I’d be able to grow into someone new. Someone happy.
The first year we planted mostly purple vegetables. The kids both loved purple and I was on a mission to teach them about healthy eating. I didn’t have a job yet, and took on the garden project with the same amount of focus that I aim at most things, by which I mean a lot.
I kept notes in a little, leather-bound book of what I was growing, where it was planted, when I harvested it and any issues that arose. My friend got me vintage gardening books at a yard sale and I read them like they were headline news. I watered in the morning while I drank my coffee and again in the evening before giving the kids a bath. I pulled every single stray blade of grass that dared to grow between the rows of purple kale. At any sign of blight or spotting or aphids, I’d bring a leaf to the garden center where I bought most of the seedlings and ask what to do. After my sixth visit in a month, the owner took my hand and said “Kristen, plants want to grow. Just let them grow.”
This year, nine years and two garden configurations later, I’m finally letting things just grow. I simply can’t find the time to continue the pursuit of perfection. I’ve noticed that some of the plant invaders I’d normally weed out are large enough to identify. There are at least four tomato plants, two milkweeds (yay!), a handful of clematis and a number of other flowering plants I’ve been able to move around to better spots in the yard. Of course there are also weeds, stubborn tufts of grass and even a bit of poison ivy that is eagerly growing up the side of the garage. This year my radishes aren’t in perfect rows, I’ve had to move a few seedlings that needed more or less sun than I expected when I hastily planted them probably too early in the season, and I’ve run out of time for trellising the raspberries everyday for two weeks.
The constant feeling that I should be doing more tending to the garden is like a siren’s call that’s just not close enough to take precedent but pulls at my attention anyway. Yesterday evening, while I was lovingly unwinding a morning glory from around the peonies, I thought about the beauty in all of the things that I hadn’t found time to weed. When I stopped micromanaging the growth and allowed for serendipity, the results are arguably better.
Right now nothing feels done. Everything needs a bit of maintenance. Very few things are unfurling as I expected. The desire to do more is permeating all aspects of my life right now. I am struggling to move fluidly around the things that are out of my control and continue growing. Instead of doing more I am going to sip this tea and imagine myself as the garden. I’m going to keep growing. There will be weeds amongst the flowering and I’m learning to be ok with that.
