Happy in my Garden

Full Spring ahead with this post by JerryD 1G

Happy in my Garden                                        

One of my great pleasures as I get older is my perennial gardening. We have a small cottage outside of New York City and as Spring arrives, it’s one of the things I look forward to the most.  I’m the first to admit that I have no real conception whatever of garden design. I might buy a plant that catches my eye, or fits my price point, and stick it into any spot I have room, with a minimal amount of thought to color combination and space. As a result my garden always looks like a work in progress. But I like to look from up close, to see the growth of individual plants that interest me, how their leaves and stems spring up from the earth, how they blossom, flourish and sometimes even wilt in the summer heat. There is something magical about the seasons here in the Northeast. Spring represents the rebirth of the world, the cycle through summer and even into September, and the fall, when I can see the plants preparing themselves for the winter to come.  It’s a never ending process that I find deeply pleasurable. It’s almost a mirror of my own life and that of the people around me.  It’s the cycle of death and rebirth, something about how I experience my own body aging as I watch my daughter, my nephews and nieces, my friend’s children coming into maturity, that gives me a sense of continuity, and some degree of acceptance of my own mortality. And it's more than just a state of mind; I enjoy awakening early in the morning, grabbing my cup of coffee and go out to see what might have popped up in the garden.  In the early evening when I call it a day, I put on my flip flops and head out to do some weeding or transplanting.  People ask me why I don’t install a sprinkler system and think...it’s the same reason I wouldn’t send my kid to boarding school, I want to contribute, to nurture, to be a part of the growth.  There’s something special about the bloom!

JerryD 1G