Giving Back

June 16 (photo credit Jeannot7)

Matilijas going strong, butterfly bush, lion's tail, and daylily in full bloom. Roses almost spent, but no rose hips yet.

I often hear people saying one of two things about gardening: it's hard work or it's not hard work.

The second type of people are usually teens who discover, upon being demanded to come out in help, that it is damn hard work and that they're sore in places they didn't even know existed the next day.

The first type are right, it is hard work, but what they fail to see is the sheer joy of it. Like single people in their 20's who visit friends who have children, they see the non-stop demands of time and the exhaustion, but they cannot feel their friend's incredible joy. Well, during the quiet moments.

I think gardening, like child rearing, religion, meditation, starts to change you from the inside and changes your view of the world.

An eminent Buddhist monk once said, "You do not see things as they are, you see them as you are."

And as you change, that tree, weed, child, song, history lesson, etc. transforms as well.

Though gardening throughout the mid-20th Century has leaned toward vast waste of water and poisoning the soil (I'd read a few years ago that home gardeners' use of pesticide dwarfs the volume used by farmers), I hope we're past much of that now. People have stopped believing that everything put on the market is safe and, thanks to books like Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, realize the implications of using dangerous poisons out in their front yard.

For me, this garden has been a lesson I've taken into my life. Though I'd asked myself questions about environmentalism before, I'd never really taken them to heart. Does this mean I'm going to turn into a vegetarian? Probably not, but heck, would their be any loss if I did? But it has made me calmer and see the world as less my enemy and more something I'm directly a part of. Hell, I'll go one further, Something I'm supposed to care for.

It may not obvious to an industrialist that his pollution is killing the fish in the lake, but it probably will be if he is a fisherman.

There's a few blogs out there who say they are for "the lazy environmentalist" or for the "fashionable environmentalist", but I'm too practical for that. To me it does mean work: hauling the water, chopping the wood, as the expression goes. I work, I sweat, I'm caretaker of this tiny eighth an acre of land. I believe this is the right way. I'm not a fan of golf or retiring in Florida, because I've been surprised by my own love of this work. And how many people I admire who take this kind of work into their lives: men and women who bicycle into their eighties, 97 year old gardeners, those early risers who are out for walks before everyone has even gotten out of their beds.

What's so crazy about it is how shocked I'd be if I could have seen myself when I was a teen. "That's me??? Hell no!"

But then again, like those single friends, I can't see the inside and how close this is to my heart. If I could understand that as a teen, I would see it all.