#14, May 19, 1999
Springtime, sunny
skies, green things growing… I was looking forward to my three-day
weekend. Before I left the office, I
had to change my voicemail message. "I'll be out of the office on Friday,
working in my…"
Thus the question
arises: is it a "yard" or a "garden"?
It's more than a
matter of semantics or style, a choice between interchangeable nouns. For me,
the two terms have come to represent two very different places, two states of
mind.
The backyard is what
you get when you buy a new suburban home. It's a scraped landscape hosting only
hardy and hostile alien invader species. It has a lot (heh-heh) in common with
other kinds of yards. The kindest comparison is to the schoolyard. But while
the schoolyard is a playground for the children, it represents work to the
groundskeeper.
There's the
corporation yard, where municipalities store piles of construction materials.
To the backyard yeoman, such piles foretell the loading-rolling-dumping of
dozens and hundreds of wheelbarrowsful of pea gravel, compost, and mulch.
At it's worst, the
backyard is like the prison yard -- where the hapless homeowner serves his term
at hard labor, pulling up weeds and mucking around to repair the ever-broken
sprinkler nozzles.
On the other hand,
there's the garden. Not a place for punishment, but for puttering. Butterflies
flitting, fountains bubbling, every sweep of lushness backlit in the hazy glow
of the westering sun. It's source of quiet creation, and restful enjoyment. The
garden is where we want to be.
The question then
becomes: how do we get there? Is it through hard work, accumulating
improvements over long spans of time? Is it by working smarter, carefully
planning with the latest in garden materials and methods? If we work hard
enough and smart enough, will we wake up one fine morning to find the yard has
become a garden?
As one who has read a
hundreds of garden-centric books and magazines, and has wheelbarrowed enough
material to fill a small municipal swimming pool, I say that the answer is no.
The true garden isn't a destination, it's a path; not a piece of real estate,
but a peaceful state of mind. If you are ceaselessly rushing to get
"there," anxiously building and buying toward completeness, you will
never arrive. You can be miserable in your Sunset Magazine estate garden as
easily as you can find bliss among the potted plants on your tiny apartment
patio.
Our culture's
unfortunate preoccupation with material acquistion has become a pathology.
Ironically, it is converting the Earth's natural garden into a most dreary
yard. Despite our intentions, advances in agriculture and technology have
brought the "civilized" world a higher rate of physical and spiritual
hunger and sickness than the "primitive" peoples. Where are we going?
We've abandoned
Earth's garden, but we haven't lost the power to bring it back.
Returning to the
garden is about learning how the earth works, and learning to work with it.
Like how to grow things with less water and without poisons, how to build things
with long lasting, low impact materials (like the decking made from recycled
plastic and sawdust.) It's putting down roots in a community, and getting
involved. It's planting trees we will never live to see flower.
At a deeper level,
returning to the garden is about being at peace with what you have, and being
centered in your work to make it better. It's slowing down enough to enjoy
Earth's simple miracles, from root tip to finger tip. It's following the Native
American wisdom: " O Great Spirit…Let me walk in beauty, and let my eyes
ever behold the red and purple sunset… make my hands respect the things you
have made…let me learn the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and
stone."
Now if you will
excuse me, I hear the wind chimes ringing. The mockingbirds are singing, and
the outdoors tugs at my sleeve. It may yet look like a yard, but it's a garden
where I go. My wheelbarrow awaits me.
Pullquote: "The
true garden isn't a destination, it's a path; not a piece of real estate, but a
peaceful state of mind."
or
"The true garden
isn't a piece of real estate, but a peaceful state of mind."