Sunday Opinion: Conclusions

The better part of coming to a conclusion on any matter can be a brilliant move at best, and at worst, a relief. Making a decision based on your best shot at a conclusion enables you to let go, move on-find another topic.  How often have you wanted to go to another topic? I do, regularly.  How you plan to move on-a decision worth some thought. The worst part of coming to a conclusion is once you pile a faulty premise on top of poor communication and observation, and boil this entire mess for hours, you find yourself out in left field alone with nary a chance of snagging a ride home.  Conclusions, to paraphrase, they can be very, very good, or they can be horrid.

There are those living things that do not speak the English language.  Babies, dogs, cats, horses, boxwood, gardens, nature-you get the idea. Some days I would include Buck in this list, or a client that throws me a curve ball.  Drawing conclusions about what is wrong is a gut reaction, an instinct, that regularly misses the mark.  On my mind-my sick boxwood.  The dead patches, the bright orange leaves-in lieu of drawing some conclusion without sufficient knowledge, I sent pictures to an expert at Michigan State University. 

We have had a number of exchanges, each more dysfunctional than the last.  When I sent extensive pictures, I got an email to the effect that there was no evidence of insects or disease. A conclusion on her part. Was there an intent here to close the topic?  I am trying not to make a conclusion, based on her response, of my own.  I know my boxwood out my office door has been the better part of a dream come true for ten years.  Something has gone way wrong.  It is easy to come to the conclusion that the expert in question has other better things to attend to, and has sent a form letter the substance of which is “your problem is not my department” -this I am resisting as best I can.  I know I need to speak to her in person.  Speaking in person is the best antibiotic against the scourge of faulty conclusions I know.  OK, I will call her. It is possible that there is no disease or bugs-that there is a problem that comes under the heading of “none of the above”-I may need to ask her to elaborate, maybe speculate. 

My Corgis have not been sick since they were babies.  Milo came off the plane with kennel cough.  A very rough plane trip from Florida landed him upside down in his kennel-my heart lurched when I went to retrieve him.  The snow at Metro airport was something he had never seen-he looked at me with those intelligent eyes of his.  Of course I drew the conclusion that he was looking to me to scoop him up and protect him from snow; maybe that conclusion was dead to right. But he also coughed all the way home in my lap-I got it right to take him to my vet asap. Howard was in the  fifth incarnation of a moleskin and masking tape apparatus to help his ears stand up; he was lethargic and distressed.  I came to the conclusion he was sick and tired of the whole process.  My comforting did not help him; in the morning I knew my conclusion could not have been further from the truth.  In fact, he had a terrible abdominal infection. I came in from left field in a hurry, and took him first thing to the doctor. I hate that my corgis cannot tell me when something is wrong-I am the responsible party who loves them.  How I draw conclusions-sometimes good, sometimes way off mark.

A garden has a language all its own.  It has taken me a lifetime to assimilate a few of its words, conjugate some of its verbs, learn its first tense, interpret literal translations.  I am better at listening now than I was 30 years ago.  I  make it my business to seek clarification, observe-and know better when to shut up and how to listen.   A beautiful garden takes this kind of energy and time.  There are lots of barriers to beautiful gardens and breathtaking landscapes.  The willingness to put initial conclusions on hold-in my opinion, this is a prerequisite for anyone hoping for a state of gardening grace.  In lieu of that, good gardeners regularly have the good sense to postpone their conclusions until all the evidence is in.  Sometimes, there are no answers. 

Leaping to conclusions takes much less time, and vastly less effort than getting friendly with a new language, or spending time with a living thing that cannot tell you what is wrong-in English, that is.  As much as any gardener expands their skills, their world expands from that experience. Welcome new ideas and embrace change-how easy for me to say! I like to do things how I have always done them; I hate being someplace with no map.  I am not a fan of being lost.

 Look at what is in your view, in spite of what is your instinct to conclude. Make new relationships out in that left field  Gardening friends all over the map-this is good.  Talk much, and exchange even more. Look at your conclusions; do you need throw any of them away?  A landscape has its own story to tell-not every bit of that story comes from you.  Do not be deterred by music that is different than what you are accustomed to.  A great garden sings-not every note comes from you.   All of its notes, no matter the origin, can enchant, or teach. The natural world-symphonic.  Make conclusions, should this seem a good direction.  Ditch your conclusions, should you have unanswered questions.  Given the big garden picture go past those assumptions and premises that are more a habit than a help.  Get up and go past them-this is my opinion.

Posted on: April 4, 2010 1 Comment
Filed Under: Strictly Opinion, Upon Reflection

Sunday Opinion: Holiday Spirit

I do believe that gardening is a beneficial activity; I highly recommend it.  The walking, weeding, bending, hauling and digging it requires can provide all the exercise you need, and then some.  While weeding, I can hear the birds, feel the sun on my neck , taste my own sweat and put my hands in the dirt; my senses get their exercise too. I am entertained watching the corgi races while I prune. There is the element of satisfaction that comes with making physical progress on a project.    Riding a stationary bike or lifting barbells has no appeal to me whatsoever.  What’s to see?  I am sure there are circumstance under which I would run, but none of them are pleasant.  Gardening is hard work, but you get more back than an admirable physique-just my opinion. 

Exposure to nature teaches a thing or two. There are no end of events in my garden that make clear I am neither the president nor chairman of the board of said enterprise-nor will I ever be up for either position.  This is a grown up experience-realizing you are not in charge, nor are you the center of anything.  I am the sole depositor to the garden bank account.  As nature doesn’t fix what she wrecks, you learn what stewardship is all about.  I’ve not met the gardener that does not respect the sanctity of life.  I’ve heard tell of toad families rescued from window wells,  goslings trapped in the swimming pool netted out to safety-in spite of the flapping fury of the goose Mom. My gardening clients talk to and play with my dogs when they are here, and I know the names of their dogs.  No one bothers the insects in my garden-although I do throw my Japanese beetles in the trash.  The arborvitae hedge that will take three years to recover from ice damage taught me more than I ever wanted to know about patience.  Maintaining a garden is a daily lesson in what is meant by committment.  Learning to garden is a process with no end and no diploma; the only person likely to be clapping and dancing about your hellebores would be you.  Anyone who has trouble identifying what constitutes a reality check would be set straight with a little gardening. 

The gardeners I know by and large have good manners.  They don’t mow on Saturday morning at 8am-only non-gardening people do that.  They don’t keep boats, bikes and trash cans within view of neighboring gardens. They clean up after their dogs and kids.  They do not burn garbage in their fireplaces. What the world sees of them is neat and orderly. The neighbor behind me-I have spent untold amounts in trees and fencing, the sole purpose of which is to obliterate my view of his 2007 and 2008 Christmas tree skeletons, his decaying canoe, his broken pots, dead bushes, and unmowed grass.  He is most definitely not a gardener, nor is he a serviceable housekeeper. Gardeners are happy to share their gardens.  This extends to offering cuttings or a start, or some useful advice.  I see this willingness to share evident no matter the size, circumstance or scope of their garden. 

Gardeners do seem to have values.  Only once in fourteen years have I have something stolen from the store-an old and spectacularly beautiful lavender topiary.  What made me so mad about it was knowing the person who stole it could not have been a gardener; I am sure it was dead within a month. I do not guarantee any plant sold at my shop.  I would not want to suggest to anyone that I have control over what they do not do, or do too much of.  Gardeners know that ignorance of the horticulture is no excuse. They do not demand restitution-they own their own trouble.  They are an honest lot; a nickel in the driveway gets taken to the counter. They don’t envy the gardens of others-they appreciate them.  I can be thoughtless and act poorly the same as the next person-but my garden reminds me that the heat of the moment pales in comparison with the big picture.

I like the holidays for these same reasons.  They bring out the best in people.  The holidays remind us that if we are able, we should help others in whatever way we can.  This may be volunteering, or contributing or instructing-something my garden does routinely for me.  Decorating for the holidays makes people feel good and act better.  I have seen lots of smiles, and been treated to an equally large number of “happy holidays” and “Merry Christmas” greetings.  Rob, whose optimism, patience and good manners rarely desert him, helps people plan to decorate, or entertain in a garden-like fashion. It’s nice to see adult faces lighting up once a sense of holiday spirit takes hold; I see him make this happen all the time. Last year an outspoken client came to the register with a wreath she wanted-in the next breath she is telling me her work hours had been cut and changed, and she really had no business buying it .  I told her I would take whatever she had in her wallet in settlement of the debt.  I took her twelve dollars, and she left smiling.  Two days later she was back-a platter heaping with her homemade baklava in tow. Good spirit-there’s nothing quite like it.     

 I have never seen so many gardens lit for the season as I have this year. Some are beautiful, some are dramatic-some are out there-but what they share in common is the gesture of light against the dark. I can attribute some of this to our warm November weather; Janet thinks the reason has to do with an instinct and the good will to provide light in a dark time.  A spirited gesture. I think she may be right.

Posted on: December 14, 2009 3 Comments
Filed Under: Garden Stories, Strictly Opinion, Upon Reflection

Sunday Opinion: Sowing the Seed

The dense fog this morning has me thinking. To my mind, what characterizes gardeners first and foremost is not that they garden, but how they keep on gardening. Fog, storms, wind, poor soil, drought, floods, bugs, disease, failure-no matter; they keep on gardening.  I am thinking about this, as I live in a community, like most other communities in this country, under economic siege.  The heavy wet white fog I drove through at 6 am this morning is as good a description as any of what I see and live with right now; eyes wide open, I couldn’t see a thing.    Without much exception, the people I come in contact with are afraid, or uneasy- unsure about how to navigate.  A fogged-in atmosphere like this touches everything, and everyone. 

I have lived in the greater Detroit area my whole life.  I grew up thinking the most fabulous sculpture imaginable was a well designed automobile. That idea is alive and well; more thousands of people than ever attended the yearly Dream Cruise down Woodward Avenue in August.  A festival honoring the beauty and diversity of the automobile was an idea that took root, and grew.  The serious economic and environmental problems currently affecting Detroit defy description, much less solutions.  I so strongly support the Greening of Detroit, as it seems to me it will take people who have that tenacity that describes gardeners to make Detroit thrive again-even if that involves reinventing its landscape. There needs to be some seeds sown that root, and take hold.

I am in the thick of two substantial projects right now.  One is ready to begin construction;  the other is is midway through the design phase.  Both projects involve interesting and committed clients.  Multiple design issues making lots of noise; this is my idea of a good time.  Designing makes me wake up and see; I cannot decribe that process any better than this. Once I am in the “wake up and see” mode, I see everything differently.  How a vignette could be arranged in a more striking way.  How I might use a material creatively. This is about the imagination, in gear. My imagination in gear over these projects that energize me made me step back and see what it is to be fogged in and not know it.

Some weeks ago I had a front door, and a rear door replaced at the store.  I ordered a door with a window for the front, and a solid door for the back.  When my contractor arrived to install the doors, we explained that the salesperson had ordered both doors with windows, by mistake.  Though the door with a window costs more, he would charge me the same as for the door with no window.  It crossed my mind that for security reasons, a rear door with a window into the garage not visible from the street might not be a good idea.  However, as the door that no longer closed properly was a bigger security issue; I said ok.  At 6:10 this morning I went into the garage-a space some 4000 square feet with no windows.  I am accustomed to going everywhere in the store without turning on the lights; I know the space well enough to confidently navigate in the dark.  Though the light switch next to the back door is a long way from the entrance to the garage, I always got there.  The one exception-a low, heavy and close to immoveable  black iron planter inadvertently got left in the path to the light switch.  I was in a heap on that concrete floor before my brain got the message. I have been very cautious, and tentative ever since, negotiating my way to the light. I remembered this today, seeing the light from the window at the far end of the room.  From the inside, that window provided security to me. Providing security from the inside suddenly seemed like a very important seed that deserved to be planted in, and kept watered.  There’s a chance that something might grow. There’s nothing that breaks up a white fog better than some sunshine.

This all may seem painfully obvious, and hardly worth mentioning.  But routinely I have to tell clients who want their new landscapes to look old and established  that the time this takes cannot be circumvented.   I tell them the crummy spring weather applies equally to everyone-one’s love and devotion to gardening doesn’t get you a pass on the frost sure to come. How fiercely you want cosmos in that dark corner of your garden does not make your chances of success better.  Likewise, the fog of tough times falls on me too-not just other people. 

The clients and projects that engage me help to burn off the fog.  Those relationships are like seeds.  Not every seed germinates, but enough do to keep things going and growing.  Another favorite thing about gardeners is their hope.  The winter will end, the weather will warm, and the garden will grow again.  If it grows slowly or poorly, they tend it with special care until the weather gets better.  Should that special care not help, they do differently, or even start over.  They stake up the delphiniums that have gone over, and they replant when things die.  This seems like a good way to live, does it not?

Posted on: September 6, 2009 Leave a Comment
Filed Under: Detroit Garden Works, Strictly Opinion, Upon Reflection Tagged With:

Sunday Opinion: If You Can

The attribution has been written down in many slightly varying forms, but the gist of  Henry Ford’s famed quote goes something like this:  If you think you can, or if you think you can’t,  either way you’ll  be right.  My most serious reason for having this on my mind this minute is a client, of whom I am very fond, who is facing a lengthy and complicated surgery which will be followed by a trying rehab/recovery time-coming up first thing tomorrow morning.  According to his wife Jeannie, he is remarkably unfazed by the whole affair.  She says he has not devoted much time or effort to worrying, or talking about worrying,  as he basically thinks he  can do this.  By no means do I mean to suggest he is a fatalist, passively awaiting his fate.  Plain and simple, he not only thinks he can, he knows he can.  I don’t believe this confidence to be a genetically derived personality trait.  I think there is an art to living a life, and he is treating his life as such.  The science of his situation is not his life.

I have another client who has for several years grown vegetables in the lot next door, under the shade of mature oak trees.  His tomato plants are twelve feet tall, his bean vines bear beans, there are vegetables of all kinds-enough to go around the entire neighborhood.  Anything and everything I have ever learned about growing vegetables successfully would suggest his garden would fail; it is anything but a failure.

I grew up in a household in which all of science was held in considerable regard.  My Mom, the consummate scientist, virologist, microbiologist, who put her mathematics to use studying genetics, did however stop short of  worship.  When she thought I was old enough to understand (I think I was about 38), she did explain that what she actually held in such great regard was the beauty of science, not the certainty of science. She believed that whether the sum total of all scientific knowledge was one millimeter or 100 miles from a perfect knowledge and understanding of life-no matter.  In her opinion, it comes to nothing -  how little or how great the distance is between the end of science and the beginning of life;  that gap can never be closed.  Hope if you are ever gravely ill, she said,  that your scientist physician is also a skilled artist, as he or she may wish to diagnose and treat you with as much as what he imagines will work, as what science might dictate will work.  Working the science is an art, she said.

Good horticulture makes certain demands, and they cannot be ignored.  But inexplicably, some science-driven choices I was certain would work, do not work.  At 59 I observe that the sum total of all the science of horticulture I have absorbed in 25 years does not enable me to grow a decent columbine, not anywhere, not under any circumstance.  My scientific knowledge is a big pile of conflicting information always on the verge of decomposition.  The more years I study the science, and work, the further I seem to be from a definition of life beyond its miracle.

Does this mean that I can grow geraniums in deep shade, and ferns in the desert-of course not. However I do believe that there are many ways in which things can work.  There is not one way to grow roses.  There are many ways to grow roses that work.  If I so choose to believe I can,  then I will figure out a way to make roses work.

The day I met Fred and Jeannie, their landscape was wild, robustly overgrown, unuseable-I wondered how I could possibly make sense of it.  They did not wonder that at all; they knew I could.  They are as optimistic, generous, and enthusiastic as any two people could possibly be. Some two years later, how they have chosen to live, shows. The garden is light and airy, spacious, and graceful.  The waterfalls are working, there is a third pond, there are vegetables and flowers growing , there are spaces to read, nap and entertain.  The choices they have made have proven to be right for them.  They have no doubt that the best is yet to come; they are so right.

Posted on: August 16, 2009 3 Comments
Filed Under: Upon Reflection