Everything is a Garden

When we were in London, we went HERE. I wanted everything. The gardening vest for £350, the hand forged pruning sheers for £250, the gardening pants. The indigo chore coat for £600 (even tho I already have an indigo chore coat) and what I really wanted, I realized, was to actually BE a gardener.

This fascination with the stewards of the land and flora is not new. I idolized Peter Sellers in “Being There” - Chance the Gardner was my alter ego. I often had no idea what was happening in the world of adults, and his interpretation seemed reasonable to me.

I bought a pair of scissors. “These are the most beautiful pair of scissors you will ever own.” Said the woman who sold them to me, as she wrapped the little box in pretty Japanese paper and closed the wrap with one elegantly placed tiny piece of tape. I liked that confidence. I’d like to be able to confidently say that to someone if I worked in a shop. “This is the best slice of pizza you will ever experience in your life.” She said it plainly, with no emphasis, like Chet Baker playing a melody.

When we first moved into our house 18 years ago (!) we had a garden. We grew squash and cucumbers and peppers and eggplants and you name it. I got some panty hose and put them over my squash plants because there was this little tiny white moth that was destroying them. I waited for it with the hose at dawn. I was like a coiled snake ready to strike. It was my main job in life, defeating this moth. It consumed my thoughts night and day. I hit it with a hard jet of hose water and it was momentarily deterred, but as soon as I wasn’t spraying it, it went back to menacing my plants again. Initially it was euphoric, the garden was booming and we had so much harvest that I would give giant baskets of tomatoes and cucumbers to my mom and neighbors . Then the heat set in, and I became less inclined to go out there, just watering, no weeding. Then the Bermuda grass started strangling things and reclaiming its dominance in our yard. The stuff appeared in America from Asia and Africa in the 18th century. It was likely a stow away in contaminated hay, aboard slave ships. Its heat resistance has made it a staple in southern ground cover, and around our yard, an indomitable pestilence.

The next year, we scattered a few seeds and a few things appeared, but we had lost our swagger and excitement about the garden. It just got too hot, and life intervened. I was doing more songwriting, we had a baby now, and there wasn’t as much time.

Across the street, our Neighbor Nord is a brilliant gardener. He has really transformed his yard into a kind of urban paradise. A little slice of nature. Flowers, bees, chickens, all very beautifully maintained. His chicken coup had a heater in it for the winter, and window boxes with more wildflowers in them. Nord is really a real gardener. He’s not thrown off by the hard labor, the digging of holes, the blistering heat. He’s taking this out and putting this in, pruning, trimming, installing fencing. After 18 years, it’s the most beautiful spot in the neighborhood without a doubt. It’s his passion. He doesn’t want anyone picking the flowers or parking on his grass and I can understand that.

I think I can tend to be attracted to the accoutrement of certain things, the fly fishing vests and the colorful flies and beautiful rods. The time to wade in a stream and reflect on life. The solitary pleasure of building a wood fire and smoking a little trout you just caught for lunch, the self sufficiency of it all.

Who doesn’t want to live off the land? Or at least be able to.

I felt a little guilty about my garden. Well…here’s another thing that you’ve started but couldn’t keep going. Another of my furious passions that burn white-hot at first, then peter out almost as quickly. Add it to the list: Bowling, Billiards, Orange Theory, Modular Synthesis, Amateur film making, Photography, Sewing, Ballroom dancing, Pleinair painting, novel writing, the list goes on and on. If it’s hard, if it takes a lifetime of dedication to get good at something, sign me up for 6 months. That’s been my motto.

The only exception is music. And painting, to a degree. Those are the only 2. Well maybe a little photography.

Then I started to realize that thing Picasso said, the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. Music is my garden. My ideas are my seeds. Winter comes, then spring. Things get buried, you don’t think they will come up, then one march morning, a little flash of green appears! What a miracle.

I’m not as fly-by- night as I thought I was. I have been a dedicated gardener of my music for many years. I have endured droughts and seen wildly bountiful seasons as well. I have fought off moths, and I have put on a sun hat when it was 101 degrees. I have tried to keep the weeds out of my soul and my heart. The vines will start growing, they want to strangle you - instagram, Reddit. They want to take the nutrients of your soil and rob you of the harvest of your time. They will strangle you by the roots if you aren’t careful and get another app to make them dormant (weed control?)

Michael Ford gave me a THE BRICK and I’m grateful. It’s given me a lot of time back (well some anyway I still do crosswords and spelling bee and sometimes even … TETRIS. But these are gardens too, even Instagram, is it’s own strange garden. I overheard a friend say “My instagram is really funny and awesome. My algorithm is really great. Except, every once in a while, it shows me something very dark.” Well yes it does, because thats what gets the clicks and draws you in, like a car crash.

I have been kinder to myself lately. Eating good food and getting plenty of rest. Taking naps when I need them and I’m starting to feel better. I was a bit burned out I think. I was starting to lose sight of the forest for the trees. I got back on my anti-depressant. I’m finally figuring out what I can eat and what I can’t. I guess it takes a while to figure out what your garden likes, what the pests are, what you can grow easily, what takes a lot of time and effort, what you actually LIKE to grow. What you can eat, what recipes are good, what you can store for the winter, what you are tired of and what you NEVER get tired of. It takes a while to figure all that out. Everything is a Garden.