It takes a while to grasp that not all failures are self-imposed, the result of ignorance, carelessness or inexperience. It takes a while to grasp that a garden isn't a testing ground for character and to stop asking, what did I do wrong? Maybe nothing.
~Eleanor Perényi, Green Thoughts, 1981
Last night, there came a frost, which has done great damage to my garden.... It is sad that Nature will play such tricks on us poor mortals, inviting us with sunny smiles to confide in her, and then, when we are entirely within her power, striking us to the heart.
~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The American Notebooks
Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.
~Henry David Thoreau
There is no gardening without humility. Nature is constantly sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom of the class for some egregious blunder.
I lost some tulips. I don't mean I misplaced them; it's that they did not grow. When planting spring bulbs awhile back, I put a dozen noir tulips in a spot I thought would be perfectly complimented by their dark-hued petals. Yet, as careful as I was when I planted them (and I'm always as careful as I think I need to be in the garden), they seem to have either rotted and weren't viable to begin with. Or, perhaps something at that particular site wasn't to their liking, or the variable weather this year confused them.
First, let me say, although I don't dislike any plant, I am not a huge fan of tulips. Although they were highly coveted in Holland and traded on a "tulip exchange" (wonderful history of this in Michael Pollan's great book, Botany of Desire, I'm just not convinced they should be coveted more than other flowers in the garden. Also, as I am planting the bulbs, I am keenly aware that each one will only produce (generally) one flower, often only once.
Also, to be truly committed to tulips, one will often pull up the bulbs after blooming, and many gardeners are skeptical of using them again. Oh, and I didn't even bring up the fact that many people chill their bulbs in a refrigerator prior to planting in an effort to "force" them. Anyway, I do love looking at them, but I see them as elements to be mixed in to the garden design more than a major focus.
So, as I was saying these particular bulbs didn't grow, leaving me with a couple of bare spots in this particular garden plot that (joyfully) I get to fill with something new in the next week or so. The "death" of these bulbs got me mulling over the facts of life and death in the garden.
Spring is considered the time of emergence, rebirth, new birth, new life in nature, and it is a wonderful and captivating season that encompasses all of that. However, leading in to it, there is an important ritual of preparation in the garden where old, dead plants need to be removed or pruned; rotting dead leaves cleared; sprouting mushrooms and weeds cleared; soil prepared and rotted compost distributed. A very vivid transition indeed.
After the long season of winter's grip and the seeming suspended animation of dormancy, gardens must be cultivated in preparation for the spurt and progress of spring growth. I've found myself in deep, mindful reflection in the gardens recently as I've preparing for the new season.
It's an important time to consider plant losses, successes and failures from the year before. I run mental inventories of the previous harvest, reflecting back while looking ahead. I consider loss and life, bounty and scarcity, growth and diminishment--the cycle (or circle if you will) of life.
Heady stuff while pulling weeds and turning soil.
It is part of the mindful experience of gardening. Great moments of insight, reflection and personal growth along side of the most mundane tasks. The holism of gardening, fully committing heart, soul, and mind to the experience can mold and change perspective. The cultivation of the soil inevitably leads to the cultivation of self.
So I do call for spring hopes, eternal and enduring, for all that occurs during this time of emergence and growth is inextricably linked to the continuity of the seasons and cycles of nature--garden and self.
