Gardening

It's spring in North Carolina--there was snow on the ground three weeks ago, but that's done now.

I am, technically, late on yard improvements--to get the right growing season, everything needed to be in the ground two weeks ago. But life wasn't like that this year. The flipside is that the start of the real heat will likely be a few weeks later, so I have some time--but not much.

When we moved into the house ten years ago, I had some vision of having a lawn like I did when I was a kid. But it turns out that doesn't work in North Carolina, apart from constant monitoring and chemical interventions: you need a lot of fertilizer, weed killer, and a service to keep it looking nice. For once frugality and laziness shook hands with environmental responsibility.

So every year there are projects. First the remedial: rock and fill dirt to level out the backyard. Killing off the invasive species and keeping the ivy in check. Replacing the bluegrass in the yard--doomed anyway, because the previous owner killed the entire yard with weed killer and had to resod the fall before we moved in, using whatever was cheapest--with something more appropriate to the climate. Then we get to the good things: pulling bushes and replacing them with native plants. This year, it's a combo erosion control and bulb-based flower bed in the corner I can see from my office desk. 

A few days ago the older child was asking me what I like about gardening. There are a few obvious answers--it's outside, you can turn your brain off for a bit. And a few less obvious--it's about planning and visualizing in three dimensions across time, it's success over the long term. 

But the truth of the matter, really, is that it's about failure. You will absolutely fail in gardening, sometimes more than you succeed. Sometimes its on you, putting a plant where it shouldn't go or not taking something into account (like the intensity of the summer afternoon sun, something you forget for good reason until you're back in it again). But sometimes you do everything correctly--right soil, right drainage, right light--and it just doesn't work. Seeds don't grow. Plants grow initially and then fail. The plant grows but not to the size it should and throws off the effect of the bed as a whole.

It's nice to have something in life where failure is built in. It's nice to remember that effort counts for a lot, but it's not everything. It's nice to go in with the expectation that it won't all work out in the end. There's too much in life pointing to the idea that everything in life is in your control if only you work better, more consistently, more efficiently, and here goes Mother Earth, rolling along without a problem, failing all over the place.