Report From An Opinionated Gardener – March 10
I recently met a woman who is a reader of this blog. “I’m interested in the way your mind works,” she said. I laughed, and we talked about grass seed, landscaping and everything except, thankfully, the workings of my mind.
Gardeners all have their own approaches to designing or maintaining their gardens, or the way that they think about their plants and landscape. There is no one right way.
That said, this gardener always wants to look deeper. I want to appreciate how the plants and gardens grow of course, and I want to always be learning from the complex interactions in the natural world. In fact, it is those intricate relationships that I’m observing out my back door that remind me that life is absolutely, positively multifaceted.
Yes, it’s more work to look beyond the surface of things. The reality is, however, that life is complicated. By definition our very existence and everything we do is both difficult and intricate…life itself is an abundant experience in all directions.
My garden reminds me to savor all of the connections and to look beyond the surface to see the rich, plentiful growth that is there.
A simple squash plant. We can look at this common vegetable and think of local, organic food, treatments for mildew or squash borers, and pollination. We might observe the willingness to grow and reproduce and ponder what this means to humans as well as vegetables. Knowing that I took this photo in a garden in Italy, I also think of how people all over the planet are connected through agriculture. And these thoughts are only what's on the surface...
