A Guide to Better Gardening

Greetings, loves. I didn’t get that video done last week. I’d like to say I’ll get it done this week, but I hate making promises I can’t keep. I’m busy these days. Busy with good, though. My plate is full but I feel like my heart is fuller. And in the theme of working hard to fill the heart (knowing that all good things come from within) I wrote a little diddy and I thought I’d share it with you…

Green grass is hardly worth yearning for. Turn on the hose, the sprinkler, toss a bucket out the window in a wide arc. Hell, just be patient and wait for the rain to come. (It will. Usually when you’ve planned to sunbathe.)

And then your grass will get greener.

But then that’s all you’ve got, green grass.

If you’ve ever turned your nose up at the freshly finished McMansion with carefully selected Harmony Perennial Ryegrass Sod laid straight to the cheap brick facade and narry a flower yet to be planted to breathe life and break up those harsh sterile lines

Then I don’t think green grass is really what you’re looking for.

For one thing, the greener it is the faster it grows. And the city won’t consider how diligently you’re drowning this precious grass when they issue you a fine because its grown so long it’s blocking your windows and overtaking the footpath and your neighbors hardly have time to care for their own lawns for all the time they spend thinking and complaining about how yours has become obnoxious.

Be honest, you really don’t want to sit out in a yard so overgrown you can’t find your patio furniture.

You have to cut the grass, dude.

And that might look better but if you were to invest in trimming and neatening the rough edges you’d be surprised to find it actually looked kind of cruddy before you did that extra work.

Sure, the mowed lawn was good enough but you should know you deserve better. Your lawn deserves better.

And yes I must admit sometimes the rain is too scarce and the water too precious and sometimes these aren’t enough on their own anyways and you must fertilize this yard to get it green.

Sometimes it won’t be green. Is it fair to love your grass less when it has fallen to the harsh blow of the inevitable winter that reliably comes and yet just as reliably will go?

Remember that you don’t want this grass to just be green. You want to see yourself in this space around your home. Plant trees, bushes, shrubbery, flowers, fruits, vegetables and vines. Build a gazebo, decorate the patio, make an archway, find and re-finish an antique garden bench, hang a swing.

Probably not all of those things because not all of those things really speak to you and you and I both know you don’t have the time to invest in creating or maintaining all of them nor do you probably have the space but make the space for the things you want in your place.

Oh, and not all that is green is good. Most weeds are green. Some are harmless, only considered weeds by popular opinion, and you don’t necessarily need to take the opinions of others into consideration. This is your grass. But some weeds will choke out everything else and destroy everything you’ve worked and wanted so hard for.

Pull out the weeds that harm and displease you. Take the time to get the whole root. Dig them out. Don’t take to shortcuts and chemicals right off the bat or just snap off the heads, you need to get all that shit out and you probably need not lay hazardous waste to do so.

It won’t be easy. Some of those weeds have grown deeper than you would think they could or should. But the space made when they are gone offers room for new growth.

I must confess I hate yard work. I would rather wash my hands of it all, hiring it done or simply picking up and moving to a high rise condo where I can set a single plastic plant on the balcony and call it good. I resist this work like most resist the dentist and the gym, but I find that once the discomfort and the labor are faced that the results are worth the uncertainty and torment of the toiling that seems endless when beginning.

The satisfaction in seeing the progress (not the completion, mind you, this work is never complete, as complete would indicate finished, and if it were finished we could not change or improve it) is perhaps sweeter than the time spent sitting peacefully in this beautiful thing born of the labor of your hands and heart.