Creating Space in Your Garden/Life/Writing

I did a lot of gardening this weekend. Weeding, mostly, but also "editing." 

Since the last time I'd visited my garden, the plants had tripled in size and now looked like commuters in a subway car at rush hour. The less aggressive ones, like Jacob's ladder, were being crushed by the robust day lilies and the ever-encroaching lady's mantle. The solomon seal had marched its way across the bed, infiltrating and colonizing neighboring settlements. Nothing, it seemed, could stop its relentless assault. 

I have long held the belief that it's sacrilegious to divide plants in June in Vermont. Our season is so short I felt it my duty to let each plant fully manifest its destiny until September. Besides, I wanted as much color as each plant could muster.

But I found myself craving space. Each plant had grown indistinct. What I faced was a mass of leafy green giants, elbowing one another aside in their frenzy to attract pollinators. I hate to anthropomorphize, but some plants are greedy.

So I started pulling and digging, first lily-of-the-valley, and then violets, and iris, and gooseneck loosestrife. I carved out pathways and established boundaries. Now that I can see where one ends and the next begins, each plant has taken on an identity. More, I found, isn't necessarily better. Neither is bigger.

This got me wondering what other areas of my life might benefit from a little space. My writing? My volunteer work? My teaching? Each of my friends? My family? Exercise? Do I crowd so much into each day that I can't enjoy and appreciate the component parts?

If so, how do I go about making spaces? Something to think about.

March in Vermont

Here's what I like about winter in Vermont: I can curl up, without apology, in the over-sized armchair in front of the fire and read at 4:30 in the afternoon because there's only darkness beyond the window.

Here's what I don't like about (this) March in Vermont. It is no longer dark at 4:30; darkness now doesn't fall until after 7PM. And yet, snow still blankets our field, and today the wind is whipping up snow devils and rocking trees. The ambient temperature hovers around 20.

My biological clock is telling me, urging me, to stop reading and start looking for signs of crocuses making their way through newly warmed soil. (Theirs is probably telling them to get growing.) I can barely see my garden, let alone anything small and green making its present known. Let's not even discuss purple. Or yellow.

I could shovel and scrape some of the snow from the garden. At Fenway and the Esplanade in Boston, MA, they are sprinkling dark soil on top of the snow to attract heat and encourage melting. I could do that. But what self-respecting crocus is going to poke its nose out in weather like this anyway?

I don't have a date such as Opening Day, or the Fourth of July, by which my garden must be green and lush. I have only my need to dig in dirt, to welcome back my foliated friends, and to be reassured that the cycle of life will, eventually, make its way around.

Nature teaches us patience, forbearance, and acceptance if we're willing to listen. And so I keep curling up in that chair and reading. It's not what I want to be doing right now. But it's a pleasant way to pass the time until spring.

When Writing is Like Gardening

Each spring in Vermont I shuttle from garden center to garden center, buying plants to fill what appear to be holes in my garden. I fill pots and window boxes with Moo-Do and pile in as much color as possible. (Impatiens do the trick with, really, very little effort on my part.) Gerananium, angelonia, lavender... go into pots. Lettuce, basil, and bean seeds land, inexpertly, in four, 3X3 foot raised beds. Cherry tomatoes live in large pots on the patio. I water, fertilize, and anticipate. 

For weeks, it seems, not much happens. Then I forget to check on things for a few days and when I go back, those holes in the garden turn out to have been the spaces the plants needed when they grew to full size. Lilies now overshadow iris, echinacea fight for space and light, the phlox has marched right over the sedum, and monarda has insinuated itself everywhere. Out in the vegetable patch, the basil has gone to seed, and the deer ate half the lettuce. Okay, so maybe my absence was slightly longer than a few days, but still. 

Novels, if you leave them alone for too long, will also run amok. When life first calls me away from a new manuscript I'm working on, I experience acute separation anxiety. I long for those relationships I've come to rely on and the characters who've kept me company for months. Plots often unfold as I go along, so writing a novel engenders almost as much eager anticipation as reading one. What will he say the next time they meet? When will she discover the girl's true identity? It's like a thirst for knowledge. 

By day three, my anxiety becomes nostalgia for friends fondly remembered. By day ten I have trouble recalling characters' names. By day fouteen I am afraid to go back. Much as I am when I haven't visited my garden in two weeks. (See note above.)

My initial reaction when faced with my garden in mid-July, after a two-week hiatus, if the weather has been (as it was this summer) very wet is panic. "This garden looks terrible!" I say to anyone who'll listen. "What was I thinking planting all those lilies?" Those lilies looked so petite and perky in June! They now bristle with unadorned stems, their foliage sags, spent blossoms litter the ground. "Off with their heads!" I want to start pulling plants immediately, despite the fact that it is 90 degrees and digging them up will, truly, leave some holes in my garden.

Gardening is a process. So is writing. It is a love of the process-as much as, or more than-the outcome, that gardeners and writers must learn to cultivate. There are days, even weeks, when my garden looks great. And days and weeks when it doesn't. The same is true with a new manuscript-or even one well into a fourth or fifth draft. Moderation is the key. Putting in too much material, too early, tempting as it is, isn't good in either medium. Impulsivity rarely pays off: whacking out huge sections of a book or garden now often leads to regret later. Better to pull weeds, edge, take notes, contemplate, watch, wait. Just don't leave it alone for too long.

Anticipation

The occasional patch of snow still litters our April landscape, reminders, like the crumpled cocktail napkins beneath the couch from last night's party, of a time past.

I'm not a winter person. I list among my favorite activities, walking on the beach and gardening. But winter has one great attribute: it's a time of anticipation. I can spend the whole of it looking forward to spring and summer.

Sometimes anticipation can be sweeter than the event itself. Consider the difference, Red Sox fans, between anticipating this year's opening day of major league baseball and the game itself. Spring is here now, and we've welcomed back robins, rain, daylight, daffodils, green grass, and the smell of fresh earth. Still ahead are apple blossoms, lilac, iris, peonies, roses, and lilies, fresh peas, basil, tomatoes, and sweet corn.

I love seeing the snow melt from our yard and the buds swell on the branches, love hearing the birds singing to find mates and building nests in the hedges. And, yet, when I see those few remaining patches of snow, I can't help feeling a certain sweet nostalgia for the pure anticipation of spring.