While I was renovating the bungalow that was going to be my new home, I had to keep the garden under control. The first job was to cut down the forest that had been allowed to grow up around it, and then to dismantle the redundant buildings, and then to try to contain the wild-growth that threw defiance in the face of blanket spraying of weed-killer. Throughout the first year, I was adamant that the garden would be "next year's project". It was going to take a long time to do anything with it and I had enough on my hands as it was.
As the property started to near completion and I was forced to take a step back from the hands-on that had been needed to that point…I put a call out for a landscaper / designer.
I explained that I wouldn't be moving in for a little while and that I didn't really want any work to start just yet – I wanted to start by getting a feel for a design. I had four 'spaces' to work with and the one I really wanted was a Japanese / Zen space, I had vague notions of what needed to go in the others. M's face lit up when I talked about the Japanese influence I wanted for my meditation space. It was the fact that he wanted to create it as much as I wanted to have it that persuaded me to let him have free rein…and to go ahead earlier than I really wanted.
What he created in the month to six weeks he worked on my plot surprises me every time I look at it. People who were in the premises earlier in the process who have come back have all responded exactly the same way. They have said, "Wow".
It is not perfect. I look at it more closely now…and I pick fault. Not in a blame-casting way, but just in a noticing things that are unfinished, imperfect, in need of further attention. Things that he should have done, and things that weren't on the list, and things that only need doing because it is a garden.
And gardens are only ever a moment in time.
That is the first lesson from my garden. Everything is only ever a moment in time. Look again tomorrow and it will have changed. Things will have grown, things will have decayed.
This garden was planted in the midst of a heatwave…at a time when I could not be there every day to water. Some plants have not survived. You always lose some when you plant a new garden. If I'd been there to take care, I'd have lost fewer…which is why I didn't want it done before I moved in...but who knows how many of those sad specimens will recover. I am choosing to give them a chance to do so. Some will need to be moved, but they'll be put back into the ground to have another shot…and if not, then they'll rot down and feed something else. To uproot them and bin them feels like too big a waste…or maybe I just remember my Dad bringing home armfuls of daffodils for Mam…the bulbs he'd chucked onto the allotment compost heap as dead waste that proved not to be quite so dead after all.
After the heatwave, came the rains…days of heavy rain, warm summer rain, soaking and seeping. It did the turf good, and the banana palms, and the fruit trees seem to be slowly recovering. The salvias are in full bloom and gorgeous. But mostly it was a joy to the weeds and the brambles and the grass that was growing where it was not supposed to be.
I decided to call some of what grew "ground cover" and to not worry too much about it. I decided to spray some of the things I knew I didn't want and to do my best to uproot others. I decided above all not to stress about any of it.
This is the second lesson from my garden. We cannot control what happens, but we can control how we react to it. We can do the work and let go of the outcome as the Buddhist tenet would have it. In a garden we may as well do the work and let go of the outcome. Only be doing the work can we hope for the outcome we want, but the outcome we get is beyond our remit.
When the rains gave way to high winds and one of the metal arches failed to stay upright, I considered whether to resurrect it. When I was told it would really need setting in concrete, I decided not to bother. For now it's in pieces propped against a fence while I decide whether it will make a horizontal climbing frame, or whether to put it out for the scrap man.
This is the third lesson from my garden. Decisions don't need to be instant; and once made they don't need to be fixed. I can change my mind about what works and what doesn't.
This afternoon I sat on the deck that forms part of my rear plot. It gives me a view of the Zen garden and the wildlife garden and forms the link from one to the other. My first lazy Sunday afternoon looking at what needs to be done, and noting it, without feeling the need to immediately get up and do something about it. None of what needs doing is urgent. It will wait a while. It occurred to me that a great deal of what we stress about and rush at, if we really took a step back and looked at it, could probably wait a while, with no harm done. Of course things cannot wait forever, there is a time in which they must be tackled or…like the garden they will run away from us and overwhelm our plot…but there is a space of time between that and the need to do everything right now, this minute, at full pelt.
There is a space of time in which we can sit and look at the overall picture and wonder about the options, try out in our minds the possibilities. We can make a decision and then give ourselves permission to unmake it and do something else instead. The garden will go on growing in the meantime, becoming its own self and maybe changing out mind about whether what we thought needed to be done, really does.
And so that is the fourth lesson – my final one for today – that noting what needs to be done is a good thing and doing it is a better one, but there is often no added value achieved in the rushing from one to the other. It is perfectly permissible to take your time, and that in doing so, your time may be more enjoyable, and who knows, you might also get a better outcome.
