Gardening & Writing

Our gar­den is behind sched­ule this year. An unco­op­er­a­tive Min­neso­ta spring com­bined with health issues con­spired against us. We just man­aged to get the seedlings we’ve been grow­ing in the laun­dry room plant­ed this past weekend—they were start­ing to look a titch ane­mic under their arti­fi­cial lights.

It was an all-hands-to-work sort of week­end to get the weeds man­aged in prepa­ra­tion for plant­i­ng the more inten­tion­al­ly cul­ti­vat­ed plants. I poked in a few hun­dred seeds, as well—sunflowers, nas­tur­tiums, marigolds, car­di­nal run­ner beans. Pre­sum­ably they are doing their invis­i­ble work under the dirt before they pop out to beau­ti­fy it all. Should’ve done it weeks ago, of course. The arched trel­lis would nor­mal­ly be fill­ing in at this time, but as it is…it remains bare.

But it is start­ing to look like something…or like it will be some­thing. Our back­yard sanc­tu­ary is just not to the point I’d hoped it would be in the mid­dle of June. 

My WIP—a mid­dle grade novel—is in about the same state as the gar­den. Start­ing to look like something…or like it could be something…still bare in spots…so many weeds…seeds of great poten­tial sown (at least I think so on my upbeat days.) It’s just behind where I hoped it would be at this point.…

I’m struck by the num­ber of writ­ers who are also gar­den­ers. I won­der if muck­ing about in the dirt, turn­ing com­post, pulling weeds, plant­i­ng seeds, mov­ing things around, con­stant­ly water­ing etc. tutors us in the skills need­ed to write. The daili­ness alone is instruc­tive. It’s so much eas­i­er to do some gardening/writing each day than to try and catch up on the week­end. Patience is impor­tant in both endeav­ors. Grand vision bal­anced with real­is­tic expec­ta­tion is sim­i­lar in each case.

The hope that comes with the plant­i­ng of seeds and seedlings, whether in a nov­el or a gar­den, is an exhil­a­rat­ing thing. The gen­tle tend­ing required to coax those seeds and seedlings to life—well, that’s good, hon­est, some­times mys­te­ri­ous work. There’s no get­ting around the fact that gar­den­ing and writ­ing require time and hard work. Nei­ther activ­i­ty takes kind­ly to rush­ing; both ben­e­fit from constancy. 

I’ve been com­post­ing for this book for three years now—researching, scrib­bling, meet­ing just the right folks, bang­ing out a first draft etc. I’m not sure I could’ve sped that up, actu­al­ly. Now that the raised beds of the nov­el­’s struc­ture are in and plant­ed, my job is to tend the growth, work on sup­ports for the flop­pi­er bits, plant a few more seeds, weed out the unhelp­ful parts.… I’ve got a design firm­ly in mind, yet I keep remind­ing myself to stay open and flex­i­ble. Some­times (often?) things grow dif­fer­ent­ly than orig­i­nal­ly planned.

As Kather­ine White’s The New York­er col­umn (and lat­er her book) was titled: Onward & Upward In The Garden!