How My Garden Grows

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells and cockle shells,

And pretty maids all in a row.

–English nursery rhyme

As I get older, I am working on recognizing and accepting who I am and who I am not, rather than beating myself up for not being who I want to be.

Unfortunately, I am not a nature girl. I want to be. It seems romantic to hike on long breezy trails sporting a high ponytail, your calves aching from the walk. I want to be the kind of person who sets up a tent in an overgrown forest and relaxes under a glorious sky of stars. I can’t, but I’d like to rejoice in ants and sow bugs and worms the way my childhood friend did, picking them up and letting them wander the length of her hands. Instead, the inside of my head shrieks “INFESTATION!” and I run the other way. I’d much rather admire the beauty of nature from a dry perch somewhere, a glass of wine or mug of coffee at my side.

I struggle with the unruliness of nature, the way that no matter how hard you try, it can’t be controlled. For a long time, I liked control, took comfort in it, wore it like protective armor.

It’s been the same way with gardening.

When I was a teenager, the definition of gardening was a lot of work my mother told me to do with absolutely no reward. Our one-story house in south Jersey had way too much lawn for its relatively small house space. The hot summer sun, tar streets and lack of old trees meant the lawn struggled desperately to stay green, the flowers to stay vibrant rather than wilt and dry out. My mother created several diamond-shaped patches for planting—always annuals, never perennials, dammit—and I was enlisted on hot May weekends to help plant and spread mulch. By the end of those days, I was covered in dirt, my back and thighs achey from bending over and stretching, resentful that I had to plant flowers rather than hang out with friends. Other times I was made to weed the garden out back on weekday mornings when I’d much rather read a book, and I growled at each brazen green stalk that managed to find its way through the tarp and the mulch to hang out alongside prettier flowers. I vowed that when I grew up, I’d find an apartment in a city and never deal with a lawn.

Here I am, though, in the suburbs, several patches of my own garden to care for. Now, no one tells me when or how to do it, and I am able to reap the rewards of hard work—my own aesthetic, the beauty of a blossoming azalea or the butterflies that rush to the small butterfly bush that has grown taller than all of us in just two years.

The perennials amaze me, the ones that turn dry and brown and lifeless over the winter, but which grow and bloom bright green with no help at all in the spring. The tulips that proudly rise and stand firm as the 80 year-old trees across the street, the hyacinths, with their misty sweet scent, which lead the garden’s way out of frost and cold.

Last night, I was being the kind of girl I don’t want to be, but who I inevitably am sometimes: mopey, moody, overly-sensitive. The only way to escape my head was to go outside and walk it off. When I returned home, the sun was setting and the cool breeze wafted through my backyard where I finally gave my garden the attention it deserved. I held the branches filled with buds in my hands and trimmed the tops. I clipped the leftover stalks of tulips whose petals had blown off in the wind. I tied up the rose bush so it would no longer get in the way of the other flowers’ light. I finally took a few sacred moments with our wildly growing snowball bushes on either side of the front door, clipping off the large white pom-poms and putting them in a blue vase by the window.

As I worked, I mused at how much gardening is like writing, like emotion. So many feelings and experiences become planted deep within us, hidden from view. They lie dormant, decaying, forgotten, until we give them a little sun, a little warmth, an opportunity for bloom and breath. Then they race outward, toward overflowing. Our job is to honor their proud stalks before trimming them back, coaxing them down to a manageable level, convincing them to relax in a quiet space of harmony with their surroundings.

And of course, the eager branches containing rosebuds and purple butterfly flowers remind me of my children, always observing, quietly growing, beginning to find open spaces to start their independent adventures. Not only once, but over and over, each year, I get to witness a blossoming of the most beautiful flowers.

Be Sociable, Share!

•