Have You Gardened Your Soul Lately?

In the spirit of community and honoring Earth Day, Elijah’s school orchestrated an Earth Day celebration. The event consisted of volunteer opportunities to partner with fellow school families to work on the school grounds, the gardens, staining and painting decks, cleaning out a storage shed and more.

I am focused on being an active part of Elijah’s school community for a variety of reasons. An Earth Day celebration seemed like a great way to model certain behaviors to Elijah, interact with other classmates and families, and positively contribute to Elijah’s ‘second home.’ As such, we planned to spend a few hours at the celebration.

To my surprise, one of my friends agreed to attend the event, which in all honesty surprised me. You see, my mindset was, “Yes, please join us for some good old-fashioned manual labor.” Maybe she didn’t understand what I was inviting her to attend? So, I forwarded an email to her with some of the projects. BUT, she still came…wow?!

Once we arrived, we had our pick of “projects” to tackle. We opted to tag-team and tackle a front area garden in need of weeding and mulching. Sounded straight-forward to me – and guess what?! She actually knew what she was doing…awesome!

For some background, my perspective on gardening is very, shall we say, basic. Generally speaking, people garden to make things grow; maybe enjoy a little piece of nature; and some tell me they find it therapeutic. Through the years, I have enjoyed friends’ gardens; but not appreciated the process, creativity, maintenance, dedication, humility or labor associated with gardening….at least not until today.

Today, my friend and I shared an exercise far beyond gardening skills and community service. As friends often do, while we kneeled in the dirt pulling weeds we talked about things going on in our lives and our children’s lives. During the process, I learned things about her I didn’t know - like she did landscaping one summer way back when….no wonder she was a gardening rock star! Actually, it was more than that.

Some weeds took longer to pull out, but the goal was always to get the entire weed out, down to the root. Some weeds were so rooted you had to use a tool to get it out of the ground. Some were rooted around rocks. Some newly sprouted seedlings looked like weeds and we couldn’t tell the difference. Then she said it! As she used her bare hands to twist and tug a large weed out of the ground, she said “I am weeding Rob out of my life.” (She had just ended a relationship with her significant other earlier in the day). It was at that moment that I got gardening…I mean really got it.

Just as in life, in gardening there are processes and events that naturally occur. Some of those natural occurrences are nurturing and others are destructive. Other things in gardening (and life) require our occasional (and sometimes regular) intervention.  A good gardener is mindful the "weeds" may overpower the peace and beauty of their sanctuary, obstructing balance and new growth. 

I am grateful for today's opportunities and my friend who influenced my new appreciation of how gardening mirrors life.

Gardening is an exercise in optimism.

Sometimes, it is a triumph of hope over experience.

~Marina Schinz