"Every area of trouble gives out a ray of hope, and the one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable."
- John F. Kennedy
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"Every area of trouble gives out a ray of hope, and the one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable." - John F. Kennedy
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August 28, 2008 | |||||||
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 Gardening by Heart Joyce McGreevy October 27, 2000 With warmth, wit, and wisdom, author Joyce McGreevy encourages us to look to gardening as a source of creativity, spirituality, and inspiration. In this excerpt from her book, Gardening by Heart, McGreevy gives us a refresher course in the merits of patience. People have schedules. Plants have cycles. People will stay up late, get up early, skip meals, cut corners, drive too fast, and otherwise work themselves into a frenzy to get something done in less time. Some people live their entire lives this way, rushing from one thing to the next, perpetually poised to seize the future. Plants aren't like that. Oh, sure, you can root-prune a tomato plant to trick the fruit into ripening sooner. You can soak seeds overnight to hasten sprouting. And no doubt the geneticists are fooling around with the timing of food crops along with everything else. But that's all about human intervention. Left to itself, a plant will take every day, every moment that it requires. Plants know just what is meant by "the fullness of time," a phrase that seems to have slipped from our revved-up cut-to-the-chase conversations. One of the most important yet least mentioned aspects of gardening is waiting. There is nothing passive about this waiting, either. The word "wait" comes from the same ancient Indo-European base for words like "wake" and "watch" and meant, at one time, to secretly keep an eye out for something or someone. In gardening, this translates into patient and daily attentiveness, taking the time to consider what is happening in the garden right now and to see within it the seeds of what will come. So all alone one morning, still in your bathrobe, you may stroll between the raised beds to see if any sprouts are beginning to push through the soil. There may be something for you to do: evict a snail, water the soil. Or there may be nothing you can do right now—other than to show up and notice what is happening all around you. To trust that nature is steadily working away and need not be forced, such as by chemical fertilizers. To respect nature. To wait. A small town in Ireland once taught me a lesson in tempering one's endless expectations. As a child, I had holidayed in Kilfinane with my parents and siblings. One day, my mother sent three of us children to the corner shop to pick up the newspaper, some cream, and a head of lettuce. When we came back a good while later empty-handed, Mom asked us if we had forgotten our errand. No, we said, and told her what the shopkeeper had told us: "The newspaper will be in at half-past four. The cream will be in on Tuesday. And the lettuce will arrive in May." That's the kind of story that could get me in trouble with friends in Ireland, where you can now get anything at any time in vast and ultramodern emporia, yet I quite cherish the memory. Sure, didn't we manage just grand, cooling our heels a wee bit? Copyright 2000 Joyce McGreevy. Reprinted by permission of Sierra Club Books. BUY a copy of Gardening by Heart: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Garden, a collection of moving and humorous essays, gardening tips, recipes, and ideas from Sierra Club Books.
GET GARDENING. Bring the gifts of nature into your life. National Gardening Association's Kids Gardening Web site.
American Community Gardening Association
National Arbor Day Foundation
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