The Ghost of Gardens Past

I was driving through my hometown earlier this week and swung by my grandparents’ old house.  I really shouldn’t have.  A great deal of my inspiration as a gardener came from the daintily kept garden of my grandparents’.  There were pink rose bushes and red rose bushes.  They had sweet peas that climbed up a trellis.  My grandfather even had a strawberry patch with a caged house over top to keep away the birds.  There were bushes with berries and all sorts of little spots where it was fun to hide.

Whenever I drive through one of those small towns I stare out the window and I only think one thing: “None of these people know how to prune.”  When I drove past my grandparents’ house, it was so much worse than that.  The paint on the tiny picket fence was peeling terribly.  One of the bushes by the front of the driveway was so over-grown; it was knocking down the fence.  In the place of my grandpa’s red and white houseboat was the dirtiest trailer I’d ever seen.  I couldn’t even see further into the place for all the cars and discarded vehicle parts.  I nearly cried.

However, then I came back to my own home and garden.  My house was built by a couple who lived in it up until about ten years ago – just like my grandparents’ house.  Who knows where they are now, but they too were gardeners.  And I know that if their spirits (or their car) were to visit my garden, they would be pleased.  I’m sure the place isn’t exactly the way they kept it, but to be cross about that would be petty.  Who cares if you’re planting lilac bushes or carrots as long as you’re doing something?

I’m really just thinking about change.  I keep telling myself that it’s not good to push change for the sake of it and contrary wise; it’s not good to keep things the same just because you are scared. 

Like I said, it doesn’t feel like any of those people know how to prune.  Of course, if pruning is done efficiently, the tree will grow so much stronger and the fruit will be so much bigger.  And it’s hard when a tree you’ve known all your life has to be cut down.  Of course, by now I’m not really talking about plants.  It’s the way we all change and grow.  And sometimes we’re smaller because the pruning hooks were especially hard on us this spring. 

That’s the way I’m feeling today … a bit smaller, because there is always more pruning to do.