ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE SOUL TALKS

I’ve been obsessing about death and dying lately and that should come as no surprise:  I am IN THE ZONE.  

You know “the Zone?”  Until about age 50, death is something “out there;” it’s part of life but even if someone dear dies, somehow it doesn’t quite pertain to the “us” at our core.  That starts changing sometime between 50 and 60.  

I began noticing the shift because I’m a classic movie fan.  I started counting the beautiful people in movies that were gone. There they were, in their prime, gorgeous bodies, at the top of their professions - all gone. I really mourned the loss: Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor, Gene Kelly, et. al. Is that weird?  

Then I had a serious illness and WHOMP! WE ARE NOT TALKING ABSTRACTIONS ANYMORE. 

For maybe a year or two I swung between “I am going to die soon” then, uh-oh,  “I did NOT die! So what am I supposed to do with this gift of time?” 

(Don’t start with that “value every day” stuff - it only adds pressure and stress! )

I did try a few things. I’m not a joiner but I joined. I’m not a good committee participant but I participated. I decided I should write my memoirs; they remain stalled in the early 1960s ( a LOT of things stalled in the 1960s!) I tried to keep an open communication line with the universe - “a door closes, another opens…but only if you’re ready.” I took a course in eastern thought and tried yoga.  I guess my doors were only ajar - nothing came to stay. 

I worked on “forgiveness” - I still do. It’s hard. Acceptance is another concept I can’t quite get my head around. When is it o.k. to accept and when do you fight like hell?  “Fighting…”is that merely trying to keep control? How does age and experience change my response to circumstances and how do I accept that my experience counts for very little in a culture of age discrimination?  (I often know the answer to a lot of stuff! Really! I’m a reader - a studier - a critic! but am just too damned disgusted to share them ONE MORE TIME with you immature morons! Don’t you people over 60 want to tattoo that one on your blouse or something?)

So here we are. More people are dying that I know and the obits list new “members” every day who are my age - sometimes younger, sometimes only a little older - and I am sad. But I enclose two wonderful poems that I really like because they make me feel better (Light bulb moment:  good writing can have that power!) and  a photograph of one of my all-time favorite “houses of worship.” You gotta’ love the human spirit!

I could be hit by a truck tomorrow or live long enough to actually pay off the house mortgage.  In the meantime, fuck it! I’m buying the chair!

A GARDENER'S VIEW

Do you garden?   Why?

Unless you grow food as part of survival, or raise cash crops and harvest and reproduction are the basis of your livelihood, then the answer to these questions require thoughtful consideration. 

Ancient Chinese, the first gardeners to intentionally transform their outdoor environment, created gardens to seduce the gods. Their thought process went “ if I make this garden beautiful enough, or enough like the place where the gods live (Garden of Eden? No, that’s the Christian version. Chinese thought the gods lived in the mountains, hence the imitation of clouds, mountains, lakes in oriental gardens.), then the gods will want to stay here with me and since they live forever, they’ll let me live forever too! 

Clever those old Chinese! They were looking for life everlasting and that’s a great answer to my original questions. Planting an oak tree or gingko or giant sequoia is a nod toward immortality. These and other great trees live several human lifetimes. Otherwise, those of us who require instant gratification plant fast growing weed trees and let’s face it, they are mere chachkas - landscape junk.

I garden because I like balance and composition and I try my very best to impose my idea of both in my environment. (And sometimes yours! I get into trouble with that one. I have a little trouble with boundaries.)  

I am not a plant collector; many gardeners are. They can’t resist including a new/unusual/exotic to their growing banquet. There is never too much or too many; you collectors will always find a place - even inches! - for one more little beauty. (Enter the Victorians and their lust for exotics from around the world - the age of botanical exploration. And now, the inner net provides the world view and world market for plant collectors. It's much easier than bankrolling a two year excursion to some tropical paradise. And Federal Express guarantees 24 hour delivery from even the remotest destination.)

Nor am I a specialist.  If you are, you now own hundreds of varieties of a single plant (and can name them all!) -  day lilies, peonies, hostas, ferns, or roses. You transformed your “garden” into “laboratory."  I happen to think your gardens are a bit boring - a one note samba? - but a specialist soon becomes the go-to person in their field and that's another good answer to "why" garden. 

No.  For me,  gardening is all about control and domination and aesthetic taste - mine.   But even a control freak like me begins with some rules and limitations: perspective, color, texture, climate, soil conditions, and space limitations.  

So I travel around the country scouting other gardens and meeting like-minded people who have staked out their patch of sacred ground.  We all wring our hands and lament the things out of our control: lack of rain, too much rain, ALWAYS those dreadful-awful-nasty deer/rabbits/groundhogs/chip monks/squirrels/birds sometimes/the neighbor’s cat/ the latest invading armies of beetles/ imported weeds that nobody knows how to control….the list is longer than gardening history!

We knew before reading the latest scientific news that trees communicate with each other (stranger than science fiction - look it up), that home grown is healthier than store-bought, that weeding is mentally therapeutic and that our mothers were right and sharing plant cuttings and seeds with each other forms a bond like no other.

We are a family of strangers connected by this shared interest.

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I have a new app on my smart phone thanks to my dear friend Beverly. It’s myGardenAnswers. Easy to use and identifies from photo nearly instantly. 

I have another one called leafSnap and it’s a huge pain. Too complicated. Don’t bother.

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Garden Walk Buffalo is always the last week end in July and if you want to be truly inspired by the power of an idea that one couple had in 1993, go to the web site and read the history of this event that now includes free tours of over 400 gardens in Buffalo neighborhoods.  Power to the People - Power to Gardeners!