A Lesson from the Garden
When The Iris was in bloom, I showed it to my three-year-old daughter (as if she could have missed it). We smelled it, petted it, looked at it from all angles, we both took pictures. If it would have accepted, we’d have given it an adult beverage and said, “Cheers!” It was a celebration, and it felt good.
A week later, my daughter screamed at me to “come look!” She showed me the wilted remains of the once-boastful bloom. Concern crossed her face. I wasn’t quite sure what to say but she clearly wanted an explanation.
No one tells parents that you will have to explain hard things to a mind that will not yet fully take it all in. Which means you’ll have to explain those hard things multiple times throughout their lives. And in case you didn’t know, explaining hard things is hard.
And the situation with this kid could get real deep real fast. She’s in a very strong ‘why?’ phase. I went with vague honesty, and that seemed to satisfy:
I said it “died back” and “went back to sleep for a while.”
And, “We enjoyed the beauty while we had it.”
And, “It will come again next year.”
And, “After the Iris, something else just as beautiful or interesting or captivating will take its place.”
A garden is a constant stream of the best that’s yet to come.
The general public is aware of cherry blossom season but seems tragically ignorant of the rest. A gardener will always notice the rolling barrage of micro-seasons: snow drops to crocuses to daffodils and grape hyacinths, followed by the tulips, Virginia Bluebells, and cherry blossoms. Then, of course, the glorious Iris with Camassias.
There’s a brief lull in May, at least in an Upper Midwest garden. But even then, we’re sustained by Golden Alexander, Spiderwort, Amsonia, Wild False Indigo, and Wild Geranium.
After that, it’s an overwhelming flush of everything. Delphiniums, boom. Scabious, pow. Culver’s Root, swoooop. Bee Balm, bing!
And we finish the garden year with Dahlias, Coneflower, Black Eyed Susans, Gaura, Great Blue Lobelia, and many more that I can’t currently recall.
A well-seasoned gardener will seek to capture that steady stream. Ideally, something should always be in bloom. Failing that (inevitable in a new garden or a cold Chicago winter), there should always be something of interest nestled somewhere.
Blooms are – for obvious reasons – the easiest meter for a win. But if you take the time to look, there is always something around that could tickle us. I once saw a half inch of a Solomon’s Seal popping up from the ground and bragged about it to a friend on Teams later.
I also get jollies from lush foliage on an expectant plant; it brings a delicious feeling of anticipation. If I see a hover fly anywhere, I blush like an anime teenager. It feels like its mere presence is saying, “Nice garden!”
But just as it’s easy to see the wins, it’s equally easy to see “areas for improvement,” as a supervisor would call it. Next to the aforementioned Delphinium lies a bare patch of soil on either side. I can’t stand bare patches. I’ll add “fill in bare patch” to my to-do list, right underneath: sow more lettuce for succession, dig out and move snowflake bulbs, tidy everything, and stop being frustrated with slow growth.
I wouldn’t call these losses, but we take them with the wins. They are present in equal measure, though I tend to think the scales are tipped toward the wins and wonders.
Life, however, seems to feel less generous. The “areas for improvement” always seem to dominate, even when there are objectively less of them. Who cares how hard I worked or how well I’ve done or that I have a lovely roof over my head with a badass little family. Because the boss’s boss’s boss asked me a question that I didn’t have the answer to. And I have to “get back to him.” So just shoot me while that thought lives rent-free in my brain for the entire weekend.
Why do we give space for wins and wonders in our garden but not in our lives? Well, I’m not convinced we need to fully understand the reasons in order to overcome them. It could be: social construct, late-stage capitalism, the patriarchy, religious shaming, shall I go on? Pretend it’s one of them, or all of them, neatly fold it up, put it in the trash and then take the garbage out.
And when you’ve done that, go to the garden and learn the important lessons. The garden seems to pull – nay! yank – us into the positive. Despite a litany of these issues to be addressed, there’s a jaw-dropping Iris to behold over there. Or, was that just the first firefly of the season? Or did that meadow rue really come back? Everything must stop. The magic must be witnessed.
Repeat that in life.
But here’s more: a chaotic-neutral reminder that everything we’ve experienced in our lives has died back. A time of peak self, a blue period, a heartbreak era. It has all died back. But since you’re a stalwart perennial, there will always be another round coming.
Next year might look a bit different. You might flower more, you might flower less. Maybe you’re focusing on your foliage next season. Your roots might have found something in the soil that changes the color of your flower slightly.
I have a Giant Scabious (Cephalaria Gigantea) plant. I’m pretty sure I dug her up from my previous garden and tucked her into the car my husband would drive 3,000 miles to our new home. That’s a big change for a big plant. I put her in a pot for the first year until I could come up with a garden plan. Well, that first year, she was more like Cephalaria Minimus. In the second year, I found a spot for her in a new bed. The third year, she was getting bigger but still adjusting.
This year though? She’s really leaning into that gigantea theme, vertically and horizontally. It took four seasons after the move for her to come into her own. But I have no doubt that her best is yet to come. I may need to divide her and start giving her away to friends. And, just like that, she’ll be spreading her love.
I had a front row seat to the Giant Scabious evolution. I couldn’t not see her, even in her minimus stage. But I seem to register her evolution more vividly than my own. I have grown along with her, especially as a mother and gardener. My foliage is lush, my buds are shooting up. Soon, I’ll flower. I hope that I am rooted enough in the present to watch.