Gardening

Every once in a while, something comes along that reminds you of your destiny, the person you were made to be, the things you are meant to do with your life.

Driving home from the library, I turned on the radio. WPLN's AM station came on with its constant buzz, and filtering out the noise of the kids in the back seat, I could hear a discussion on gardening. Tom Ashbrook and guest speaker Robert Harrison were talking about gardens. I caught the tail end of a poem (I think) about a gardener that insisted on showing his visitor his flowers, then got caught up in pulling weeds and transplanting a crowded aster before the visitor finally decided to leave. The program went on to discuss gardens being 'pockets of Eden' and how they bring healing and peace. I couldn't stop the emotion welling up inside.

I remember Rilke writing to a young author that a true poet can't help but write; trying not to would be the death of him. I am compelled to garden.

On my trip a few weeks ago to the Seed Savers Exchange, they had a garden in front of the main barn: raised beds in a geometric pattern, bamboo supports of beans and peas intermingled with flowers. Visiting different places gives me vision for my future gardens, just as enjoying another's work of art or literature gives me vision for the things I will create and write in the future.

When thinking about moving, I have been obsessing about how to take my shrubs and flowers with me. I have been scheming about the best ways to get starts of them all before we have to put the house on the market. Packets of vegetable and flower seed I have saved are tucked in random places throughout the house. I dream about the gardens I will have at the new place.

A seventy-year-old woman called in to the radio program. She had planted eleven gardens in her lifetime, leaving a trail of flowers behind as she moved on through life. She talked about how gardening brought her closer to the Creator, her secret garden turned sacred.