My husband just said, “You were in the garden all day, and you didn’t talk.”
“So what’s your point?” I ask. “You want me to garden more?”
“It’s just that you try and get me to talk all the time,” he adds. “You talk to friends in the evening; you talk to yourself in the bath. Eight hours in the garden, and you have no need to talk.”
His observation makes me realize how profoundly different I am in the garden. How can I explain to a non-gardener what happens in the garden? How can I describe how different it is than any other activity; and how purpose and time and rhythm and the senses are one? How can I convey the experience of the garden? How can I write this essay with the clarity and succinctness that is mine in the garden, but eludes me at the keyboard?
I’m not the landscape painter in the family, but I think gardening has something in common with painting and nearly every other creative endeavor. It involves a vision; the vision evolves over time — the palette, texture and shape of the plants supply the aesthetic complexity. Then there’s the needs of the plant: the amount of sun, water, drainage and type of soil. So you see just how many things there are to consider. This makes the act of creating a garden challenging.
There’s vision and purpose in the garden.
As I transform the earth to match the vision I hold in my mind, I must also confront what’s right in front of me: There’s a plant that’s outgrown its current location, and a shrub that needs to be moved out of a wet location. My vision and reality come together here. I stand back and take in the pleasing results — results I rarely see outside the garden when working with people.
I’m challenged and relaxed at the same time.
What I strive for outside the garden comes naturally in the garden: in the singular act of planting or weeding, I live in the moment. There are no electronic interruptions. Mind and body are meant for this. The rhythm is not dictated by manufactured interruptions and deadlines, but simply the needs before me: I see a plant that needs to be sheared; the bird bath needs topping off; and a skunk has dug up a new planting. My mind gets to work on how to skunk proof that area.
This is a form of creative expression that has infinite variety. No two gardens are alike. And like plein air painting, all the senses are employed: the sun on your arms, the smell of the turned earth and life, the call of the catbird, the gulps of fresh air, the taste of mint, the hummingbird hovering over the bee balm.
There is no need for speech.
My mind is focused yet suspended. I’m thinking of everything and nothing. As I feed the soil, this solitary act feeds my subconscious. My mind is a medley of half-formed ideas that become whole. I allow my mind to wander, and my subconscious offers up answers to problems that have vexed me all week: I rewrite some copy that has stumped me; I come to a new understanding of a family member; and I unearth these long forgotten lines from the New England writer Malcolm Cowley:
“I pray simply for this: to walk as humbly on the earth as my mother and father did; to greatly love a few; to love the earth, to be sparing of what it yields, and not leave it poorer for my presence.”
After a day in the garden, I come inside, and my husband has dinner on the table.
Glorious.