I recently had my small apartment garden redone. When I moved in I found what might be described as a low-maintenance (boring), neat (lots of squares and lines of repeated plants), lock-up-and-go (who cares if it dies), partially paved (nongarden), colourless excuse for a garden.
Dull, easy to get tired of looking at, if not depressed by, when you get home from work, and anything but inspirational when you open the blinds. Yup, I didn’t like it.
You don’t have to accept dullness and repetition and overstructure in your garden, whatever your budget. Gardening is full of lessons — you don’t have to accept a dull life, even if you’re in one.
You will harvest what you plant (and care for). Plant nothing, and nothing will come up to delight your senses. It's worse than that — weeds will appear out of nowhere and take over (I’m always amazed at that). Weeds need no nurturing, no pruning, no love. They thrive on neglect.
A gardener’s work is not done if the weeds are not removed — carefully, purposefully, so as not to let a seed fall in fertile ground.
I don’t know much about gardens (technically), but you don't have to. Figure out what you’re looking for and let the professionals make it happen. While their experience isn’t always obvious, there’s a huge difference in the lifespan (and loveliness) of a plant correctly planted, in properly prepared soil and irrigated than when you just rip off the plastic cover it came in and plop it into the ground.
We tend to focus on flowers, or fruit, in a mature garden. The bright spots, not the foundations, the tips of plant icebergs. This is the purpose of the plant, right? Why do stems and leaves and roots matter? We forget the functions of the dead leaves that fall in autumn, to cover and protect and eventually nourish the roots for the next season.
The green stuff (unless there’s only green stuff) is just the background, the foundation for the makeup, right?
If it's true that we focus on flowers (they don’t advertise the leaves on the seed packets), then that’s something we tend not to do in life.
In life we spend more brain energy on the “bad” stuff than on the good. We worry more than we relax, don’t we? I’ve been trying to adopt a different approach.
As settled and comfortable as they may be, our everyday lives are made up of a mixture of good and bad events and influences. The trick is to contain the nasty stuff and give life to the pleasant stuff. That’s not to say that life will ever be a bed of roses. It won’t. Fertiliser isn’t made out of sweeties.
Problems, like weeds, will thrive and multiply if left to their own devices. There are problems you can do something about
There are, however, problems, particularly those not of your making, that you may be able to do less about, or nothing. Some things we must accept.
Do not think you’re special if you’ve got problems. We all have them, and it's not a competition. There’s no gold standard, no universal index for how big one problem may be when the same problem is considered trivial by another. Don’t judge, you don’t know, but the problem will be as big as you allow it to get.
The compost heap is useful, but should be tucked away where the smell doesn’t bother you
You have a choice about who’s in charge and you need to keep problems under control. Draw boundaries around them, circles of containment, if you will. Contain the space they occupy, starve them of worry oxygen, and don’t give them too much of your time. Try it.
Once your problems are locked up in the problem box of your mind, you can set about smothering even that smaller space by planting more positive ideas and consequences in the garden that is your life.
The compost heap is useful, but should be tucked away where the smell doesn’t bother you. Our mistakes and learning curves are the compost heaps of our lives — contained and left to decompose they can form useful nutrients to our future endeavours.
Once you’re on top of this, look up from the weeds you’ve been pulling out and see the flowers of your life. We all have those too, nobody gets left out.
It’s not easy to contain your problems and celebrate your opportunities, but it's worth a try. Indulging in your despair isn’t. Get over it. Get a life.
