I forgot to provide the flowers for church this morning.
As I walked into the sanctuary, there was the empty pedestal where the bouquet usually sits. There were the other Unitarians who were saying, “Where are the flowers?” There was the program that read, “Flowers provided by… in memory of… arranged by C.L. Fornari.”
Yikes.
The truth is, I simply forgot. It slipped my mind that I’d agreed to do the arrangement for this Sunday and I neglected to look at the calendar where I’d written “Flowers for church”. I hate it when I screw up.
One of the garden truths that I often speak and write about is that there should always be an acceptable level of damage. In other words, the garden will never be perfect. You’ll always have some leaf spot or bug-ridden foliage, and some plants will die. Sometimes the damage is even caused by the gardeners themselves.
For too long homeowners and home landscapers have thought that every problem needed to be treated, every disease and insect totally eliminated. If the weeds were thriving, or your plant was dying, you were told to spray a product and all will be under control.
As if that were possible…
It’s an imperfect world, in and out of the garden, and we all mess up now and then. We need to admit that we were deluded to think that we could make everything in our landscape absolutely perfect. It’s time to acknowledge that in trying to control our gardens absolutely we end up causing more damage in the long run.
Some people have a hard time accepting an imperfect garden. Others have difficulties accepting when other people, or they themselves, are lacking. I guess that in our gardens and in our lives we strive to do the best we can without causing more harm along the way. And sometimes we screw up.
