What‘s all this growth for anyway?

For a few years now “learn how to garden” has been about two-thirds of the way down my to-do list. I’m not specifically interested in gardening, but my anxious hallucinations have me believing it’s a skill I might need in the future. It feels responsible to be prepared. Unfortunately, gardening is a hobby not well-supported by my unique skill set.

When I think about starting a garden, I tend to get hung up on logistics. I don’t know which plants to plant and when, who they should be planted next to, how to prune, etc. It all overwhelms me. I get caught up in the minutiae and the whole plan falls apart because I didn’t get the seedlings on the window sill before groundhog’s day. They won’t be ready to be planted during the correct moon cycle come spring. Everything comes to a stand still while I decide what to do next. I can be inflexible in my thinking that way. I find myself mentally trapped in a detail.

I am also very impatient. I like writing and drawing because the results are nearly instantaneous. When I sit down here on Sunday mornings, I know that by the end of the day, come hell or high water, I’ll have something for you to read. I don’t even have to wait 24 hours to call it complete. But a garden requires a greater investment of time. I feel more confident now that I can rely on myself to care for a garden day after day. In years past, my little seedlings would die of thirst before I even remembered I’d planted them. I’m still forgetful, but I’ve since improved my ability to schedule.

I have to let go of control, which is not a strength. There is weather, and rabbits, and I’m sure a thousand other unknowns that hardened gardeners relay like stories of war—that was the year we lost our entire tomato crop to the blister beetle invasion. I don’t know if I can handle that kind of heartache. I have a soft soul. And I love tomatoes.

I don’t have a garden yet, but I do have a gardening philosophy: let things grow the way they want to, otherwise you’ll be fighting two battles. One against nature and one against balance. It makes sense to me to work with the nature of each plant by providing what it needs to grow: the proper amount of space, nutrient rich soil, enough water, and sunlight. I think my job as a gardener is to shield my plants from the harsh reality of their environment as best I can, while observing signs of thriving plant life and cultivating those qualities. If a plant doesn’t grow well in the environment, that is not the fault of the plant, but an incorrect action to care for it in that spot. Inversely, if it does so well it overwhelms the diversity in the nature that surrounds it, balance has tipped and needs to be restored. The responsibility of the gardener is to find the happy medium for all things that live in the garden together. Achieve balance.

Outside of my apartment building, there is a large sign advertising the name of the complex to anyone driving by. Around the base is a circular patch of mulch where the complex gardeners planted rows and rows of what I think are pansies. There are several of these pansy patches about the grounds, but because of the critters around here, the gardeners cover the flowers with arched aluminum tubing draped with black netting. Recently, they replanted. The bushes had grown in thick and luscious under the confines of the netting and I was relieved to see the gardeners removing it. Only once they had cleared away the nets from the flower beds, they carried on ripping the things out of the ground by the root! Leaving not even a moment for the plants to fully expand their leaves and petals. They raked the ground and planted younger flowers in their place. The same color scheme and everything. Then they reinstalled the cages.

It seems silly to me, covering the flowers with all that technology. Why not just let the deer and squirrels enjoy them too? I’ll tell you what, as a resident, I’d be delighted to spend an afternoon on my balcony watching a deer snack on a few flowers. If the apartment complex doesn’t want the plants to be eaten, they should find something pretty that deer don’t find delicious. Something native to the area would probably have a natural defense to the nearby wildlife. Instead they trap flowers in cages. I don’t know, I think about my garden differently.

While I don’t know how to garden per say, I do know that bars and cages ain’t it. My neighbor, Mr. Ray, has a rack in his yard holds several five gallon buckets up off the ground. I suspect he built it himself. The buckets contained strawberry plants back when he still grew them. He built the rack to lift the tempting berries up where the rabbits could look but not munch. I respect that kind of gardening, too. Growing food. There, some technology makes sense. That deer is welcome to chomp my flowers, but stay away from my dinner, please. I like that Mr. Ray solved the problem with tools and ingenuity, and that he didn’t hurt the rabbits for being themselves. He outsmarted them. That’s where I imagine myself focusing my gardening efforts if I ever get that far down my to-do list. I would enjoy growing my own tomatoes, and my grandfather used to grease the poles of his bird feeders to thwart the squirrels, so that kind of animal warfare is in my bloodline.

I’m sure if I tried it out, I’d amass gardening knowledge over time. A lot can be learned through trial and error. That’s part of what stops me from planting my first seeds. The errors. I am afraid to make decisions that will hurt other living things. What if I choose to plant the beans too close to the peppers and the peppers are overwhelmed by the vine? That’s a big responsibility and I don’t know anything about how peppers like to grow. I might never forgive myself for an oversight like that. I guess I could check on them. When things grow slowly, there is time to make changes before the peppers get strangled.

The work doesn’t scare me off. I like being outdoors, I’m excited by a project, and I can take direction. I’d like an apprenticeship. If someone stood beside me and explained how to cultivate each plant, I could become a great gardener. I’d carefully support my plants with stakes and cages. I’d talk to them kindly and tell them what a great job they are doing growing so tall. I’d pull out the surrounding weeds gently so as not to disturb their thickening root systems, and I’d keep an eye out for hungry insects and critters. I perform well under that kind of pressure. Protecting something more vulnerable than me. And because I don’t have any idea how things should go, the garden would grow the way it wanted to. I think it’s best to work with nature, not against it. With a little shared knowledge, my garden would flourish.

When I think about it, it’s really the plants that do the hard work. My job as the gardener is to keep an eye on the big picture. Maybe growing a successful garden is as simple as giving each seed what it needs to thrive, and caring for a patch of soil as the plant roots in. The rest is worked out as we grow.

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Thank you for reading.