“Nature had come into her own again and, little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long tenacious fingers.” – Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
I am no gardener, but I have spent a lot of time in gardens.
Of course, visiting the gardens of others, whether friend or professional, is always more pleasant than tending my own, because I neither have the knowledge nor expertise to make the garden of my dreams come true.
What I have spent a lot of time doing is cleaning up gardens. Weeds, vines, and volunteer trees – I have dealt with them all, and their utter disregard for my need for control.
My own little yard in Brooklyn is one mess; it has lost its lawn, the ivy has taken over, and the fence began coming down last summer. As we watched, the yard, which once had azaleas, wild roses, and morning glory, began looking more and more like Miss Havisham’s wedding table, perfect in its state of decay. Then, one day, someone came over and commented on how nice our back yard was. Really? Could they have meant that or were they being kind?
I have learned to listen to the voices of others, in order to understand the inadequacy of my own, which chastises me for not making better gardens and for not having the skills to realize my dreams. Are these dreams at all realistic? Or are they sheer fantasies?
In Virginia, the garden of my later mother-in-law, Maria Prytula, was once a dream. A wild idyll on the top of a hill, it laughed at the local style -- trim, clipped, and mowed. It was the style of the buzz cut versus the head of frizzy hair. But it was a garden of paradise, with red bud, magnolia, and daffodils, to say nothing of honeysuckle, trumpet vine, and the vine I love to hate, wisteria, which after a season of trimming once landed me in a doctor’s office needing cortisone shots. “You can only get this shot three times in your life,” he told me. “Hopefully, it works the first time.”
After Maria’s passing, the garden began its own descent into decay. The wisteria began to weigh the deck down, and the trumpet vine simply began to take over. There hasn’t been a day that I have worked on either garden, and thought about du Maurier’s line about nature taking over.
Which is what nature does, in the best and worst of scenarios. If we find ourselves in such a moment right now, I somehow take great comfort in the chaos of it. It stares me right in the face, reminding me of my absolute lack of control, and dares me to do something about it.
I once had a fascinating conversation with the minister at the church where I taught. He asked me how my day was going. “Today is one of those days where I feel like I am just bringing order to chaos.” I answered. “I have lots of those…” I then proceeded to tell him about my childhood jewelry box. It opened with a little spinning ballerina and had a music box in it as well. However, more often than not, what was inside was a tangled mess of bracelets and necklaces that came out in one unit. I would sit on my bed and painstakingly unravel every single piece until I had separated each one and put it back in place in the box. There was something so pleasing about this activity.
The minister simply looked at me when I was done and said, “Anita, the creation story is about bringing order to chaos. Indeed, if you think about it, everything we do is about bringing order to chaos.”
I was floored by this. I just looked at him and thought, “This is why you are a minister. You can take my silly jewelry-box story and turn it into something profound and so much larger than myself.”
And so, I pick up my clippers, both large and small, and go outside, where spring reminds me of its renewal and I begin the process of making order out of chaos.