THINGS LEFT UNDONE
If I had my druthers, I would work in the garden for many hours every day. I would do it at least three seasons a year. When not working in the garden, I would spend another large chunk of time writing about gardening–ideally for a large and appreciative audience of like-minded individuals.
But life gets in the way. Like everyone I make commitments, acquire stuff that needs care and have to handle the mundane matters that make up the bulk of everyday activities. My husband and daughter don’t necessarily share my enthusiasm for life among the roses, butterflies and crabgrass. I can’t imagine why, but they just don’t think as highly as I do of the thoughtful dinner guest who invariably brings me a bag of composted cow manure as a hostess present.
My garden never gets as much of my attention as I would like. Sometimes, like this spring, it gets almost nothing. Now, in mid summer, the inattention shows in a thousand little ways. There aren’t a lot of colorful annuals, though my refrigerator contains a plastic bag full of seed packets, ordered in the winter when hope was high and acknowledgement of reality was low. The majority of mulching that I intended to do is still undone and some of the plants have suffered for it. Of course the rampant English ivy and yellow archangel are a form of green mulch and many of the ornamentals grow so thickly that there is no bare earth. In spots where neither of those things has happened, the weeds happily cover the ground, untroubled by the absence of mulch, water or anything else. Nature abhors naked ground as much as I do.
Generally I mutter about this situation and vow to make big changes. Being both an optimist and a perfectionist, but not necessarily a realist, I think of all the ways that I could change everything and become the complete gardener of my imagination. All I have to do is get rich and get rid of about two thirds of the stuff that clutters up my house, and a few of the foolish commitments that clutter up my life.
I got busy strategizing how I would manage all of the above, adding the proviso that I would all have to be managed before we leave for summer vacation in one week’s time. Even in the midst of my optimism and advanced strategizing I felt a migraine coming on.
I was doing my strategizing on the back porch, which overlooks the back garden. The large butterfly bush that dominates the upper back garden was right in my line of sight, adding to my distress. Late last winter, when I should have been pruning it back for optimum early summer flowering, I was doing a host of other things. The host of other things continued unabated through the spring and has only just begun to slow down. I did manage to prune off a few of the broken or dead branches, but the rest of the bush is leggy and ungainly, with only about a third as many flower panicles as usual. I expanded my list of urgent garden chores to include pruning the butterfly bush right after vacation to optimize its fall flush of bloom.
I was scribbling and strategizing with such vigor that I was beginning to sweat. Then I noticed that three big tiger swallowtails were having a wonderful time on the butterfly bush, dropping onto the florets, sipping nectar for a time, then flying up, rearranging themselves and settling to sip more nectar from different flower panicles. If they minded about the diminished flower production or the ungainly shrub, they didn’t let on. Their acceptance of these conditions was a revelation, albeit one that did nothing to make me rich, de-clutter my house or rid me of the desire to say “yes” every time someone wants to saddle me with an additional responsibility.
I am a great believer in the perfectibility of human beings–especially of this human being. I have always thought that if I could just work a little more efficiently and avoid distractions, I would be able to get everything right. The fact that this hasn’t happened yet has never deterred me. I wake up hopeful every morning.
However, the butterflies slowed me down enough to make me wonder how good things sometimes are even when perfection only exists in notations on the daily planner. After all, plants that I ignore frequently do very well all by themselves. Rain sometimes comes when I forget to water. In the absence of slavish care, some plants die, freeing up time and space for less difficult specimens. Sometimes the right things happen when life messes up your grand designs.
The butterflies worry about nectar, not perfection. It’s possible that they think the butterfly bush is already perfect. How fortunate they are that their brains are too small to understand the art of list making.