We all know that our gardens are great places to enjoy beauty and commune with nature. Equally, we’ve learned they are great places to stress out. Reasons for stressing out in the garden range from our gardens providing little beauty to enjoy to certain elements of nature audaciously overly communing with our plants.
But, hey, stressing out never gets any credit for its positive side. One thing stress is especially good at: Teaching us life skills we’d really rather not learn. Things like planning, setting goals, budgeting time and money and living up to commitments. Or, conversely, accepting our limitations and the consequences for failing at all those previously mentioned life skills. From such things, we actually grow and improve as people. Some of us. Sometimes.
And one life skill the garden is especially good at imposing upon us? Prioritization. At any given moment, there are probably a hundred different garden chores available for us to choose from, ranging anywhere from ordering seeds while sipping wine in front of the fire to cleaning up a heaping pile of ginkgo fruit that is stinking up the neighborhood.
Prioritizing is choosing the things you need to do over the ones you want to do, because some garden chores are, in fact, more urgent than others. So, on a cold, rainy day when you’d love to be poring over a stack of catalogs, you might find yourself shoveling ginkgo fruit. Why? Because you know damn good and well that sooner or later your neighbors are going to figure out where that smell is coming from, and, when they do, they might start throwing rocks through your windows. Rocks with notes attached. Not notes so much as death threats.
On the other hand, some jobs you think you need to do, like cutting back spent perennials, can wait. You can actually put this off for as long as you can stand them looking more like someone else’s hairy mole than the stunning, professional photos of them you see in books. There are few arguments for cutting back dead perennials apart from aesthetics, so that job, although a favorite of only an aberrant few, is actually an example of one we think we need to do but is just one we want to do.
For some cruel reason, almost all the jobs we don’t want to do are requisite to doing the ones we do want to do:
Turning turf in the winter is why we can plant a bunch of new plants in the spring.
Wheelbarrowing loads of manure on a spring day is why we enjoy picking bounties of tomatoes in July.
Staying on top of weeds all summer is why we can cut flowers in the fall.
Raking and disposing of piles of ginkgo fruit in the fall is why we’re not run out of town and can start seeds in winter.
Sometimes it’s hard being a grown-up, and a gardener, but prioritizing our garden chores responsibly is key to enjoying many rewards.
Illustration by Tom Beuerlein
