Gifts from the Garden

My fingernails have been some degree of dirty since April, all the while on exhibit to the public at restaurants, retail stores, business meetings, cocktail parties, weddings, and funerals. My back aches in the morning, and my left ankle—broken while snowboarding two years ago—stiffens by evening from five months of self-induced manual labor. I think of the hours I’ve lost this summer digging holes, pulling weeds, pruning shrubs, fertilizing flowers, laying stone, moving dirt, and mowing that godforsaken lawn.

I try not to think of the money spent.

Is it all worth it? I ask myself. Of course it is. My remorse lasts but an instant before it is overpowered by memories of countless gracious moments bestowed only on those who garden.

I remember spring, when a glance at dry and winter-beaten evergreens revealed the amazing emergence of soft and succulent candles of the freshest green. Tiny sprigs of leaves appeared on shrubs and trees, while the tender tips of perennials nudged aside last fall’s clutter to reclaim (and enlarge!) their spot on earth. I saw, but more important, felt my tiny patch of planet awaken from desolate slumber, and soon I was once again blissfully in step with the true and primordial rhythm of the Earth. Anyone with eyes notices the landscape greening up, but the full meaning, tranquility, and comfort of nature’s rejuvenation is shared only with the gardener.

I remember the giving and receiving of many plants during summer, to and from whom (and exactly which plants) I need not remember. To garden is to share. To comment favorably about a perennial in the garden of a neighbor (or that of a barest acquaintance) is to solicit the automatic response, “You want a piece of it?” It’s a little game, a skit only gardeners can play, where everyone knows their lines and no one keeps track of how much they’ve given or received; it all evens out.

I remember solving all my and the world’s problems while watering in early morning. One day I had eased away all anxiety about a potential business problem before I was halfway finished flooding a bed of thirsty ligularia. While giving a newly planted magnolia a good, stiff drink, a dazzling lead sentence for an article on shade gardening that was refusing to write itself popped into my head.

I love watering plants. The soft, hypnotic sound of water being sucked into the earth combined with the utter mindlessness of the activity bathes the brain in intensely creative juices. Whenever I hit a brick wall while writing, I get up, walk outside, and water. When I return to my computer, new words inevitably flow. Watering is better than music for soothing the beast within. When I receive bad news, I water; when angry, I water; when my garden needs water, I water. No matter the reasons, by the time I turn off the hose, I feel at peace.

There are those with fancy irrigation systems that automatically water fine gardens installed for them by others; the keepers of these homes are too busy and too important to water the nameless plants themselves, and that’s fine. Their houses will always be bigger than mine, their bankbooks fatter, and they will die with more toys than I, but they will never know what happens to heart and soul when you gently wake the bees at sunrise while watering a garden. 

Reach Don Engebretson at his website renegadegardener.com.