Sometimes The Lesson Comes from Garden Dirt
It always starts off with grand hopes, simple intentions and by September it’s impossible to ignore that two things have happened; plans have gone a bit off the rails and, in its own way, the garden gently teaches. Thankfully, this year at least, the simple intentions have come to fruition with flowers of one sort of another in near constant bloom for the birds to feast on. Grand hopes to keep the invasive plants at bay didn’t pan out but there really was no doubt they would prevail. And in the end, it is the invasives and flowers which lend so much to my own growth.
The invasives are there, I’m convinced, to teach persistence. Will they slow their pace if I pull them up? Dig them up? Drown them in agricultural vinegar? What if they are covered with cardboard and then weighed down with clean compost and mulch? Surely that will do the trick! Nope. Not even breaking their stride. Well, there is always next year when I can try again, perhaps being more mindful to pull them up on a daily basis rather than weekly.
It is the flowers however where I feel the greatest sense of being led to a broader awareness of what’s around me. The humble and tiny beginnings of their shoots showing up just as it feels the muddy Spring has little to offer. The will and determination of the barely larger than my pinky finger plant plugs, which I delicately remove from their cell packs. With each planting, wondering if I’m imagining the clean up to come in a few months that requires lopers to cut down the initially far too skinny stems.
Also in the Spring, tall stakes get pounded into the soil, string tied on and corrals set up to support the far too spindly zinnia seedlings. It is, as my mother is fond of saying, the ultimate example of optimism with the stakes rising 4 feet from the ground and the baby plants barely taller than my thumb. Hard to believe by September 1st they will be taller than my 5’7” frame.
But it was today, as I was harvesting some of the zinnias for myself, that I noticed the resilience of these annuals on full display. In a summer filled with record breaking storms, wave upon wave of humidity, not to mention the goldfinches and hummingbirds which stand on their flower blossoms, these flowers are showing up. Not only have they produced more blooms but some of those flowers have overcome amazing adversity. One flower I noticed today had been nearly decapitated from its stem but had still come to bloom. Another massive group had decided to switch gears after their main stem had been knocked over and were now growing up perpendicular to the stem rather than parallel. And finally, the crew that snaked and curled to get their flower out to the sunny patch for bloom, while the stem navigated those twists and turns.
I recognize that not everyone will agree with me that flowers can teach us resiliency or weeds are good for reminding us to keep going, I would respectfully disagree. It would be far too easy to get carried away with the daily doings of life – the dishes to wash, the laundry to fold and the news to fret over – that we’d miss the day unfolding, offering us so much. The buzz talk about living your best life, creating a future for yourself are all lovely but let’s face it; if you can’t see today, all of that talk will be lost on you.
Flowers with crooked stems, invasive plants that won’t stop, dirt that you track in on the bottom of your shoes are all fine ways to stay in the day. The hope of next year’s garden and the never-ending to do list serve as beacons on the horizon line, a place to move toward. We could all benefit from having such goals, however they come to us. And that is my question for you; where do you find your inspiration? How do you recognize the lessons when they cross your path? Nature has been one of my greatest teachers and I hope you find yours as you travel through this magical journey of your “one wild and precious life.”*
* Mary Oliver, poet
