A Hard Pruning

I've been struck the past week at the similarity between my journey in gardening and my journey in life.  There seem to be lots of parallel lessons and that's probably a good thing since it often takes me two, or a hundred, practice rounds to get things into this hard head of mine.

I never considered myself a good gardener.  I could get plants to grow and for a short time they might even look healthy and beautiful but sooner or later, the blooms would give out and the edges would brown and shrivel up.  I watered appropriately.  I planted according to the directions on the labels: full sun, spacing, etc. but even if the plant lived, it just never seemed to reach it's full potential.  So, I chalked it up to having a "brown thumb" and continued adding varieties of things to my garden, enjoying them for the week or so that they were vibrant and ignoring them the rest of the time.

I wanted this year to be different.  A lot has changed for me -personally, spiritually, even physically so, I figured why not make some changes in the old garden, too.

One thing that has not changed is my love for learning new things.  I love learning new things!  I love learning!  It's why I read ridiculous numbers of books and watch ridiculous numbers of documentaries.  I love (and need) those little reminders of things that are important to me and values that I want my life to reflect.  Inputting new information keeps me constantly weighing my actions against my core and my convictions against my methodologies.  Learning is like a layer of fertile soil in my life.

But good soil alone doesn't make a garden grow and so I put my inquisitive brain (and the most important man-made tools in all of history -Google and Youtube ;-)) to work and got busy educating myself.  I quickly found out there was an area of gardening I had long since been neglecting: pruning.

I mean, I was familiar with the act of pruning.  Tim had spent hours upon hours researching the correct pruning techniques for our fruit trees but I had never transferred that information to my plants.  I would "dead-head" flowers here and there but for the most part I steered clear of the pruning shears out of sheer fear (chuckle) of killing my plants.  You know, the ones that were dying a slow and agonizing death anyway.


But pruning, my dears, is key.  And while there are better and worse times of year and such as that, what I've discovered is that you almost cannot screw it up.  Now, the pruning shears are my best friend in the garden.  After the blooms on my rose bushes began to lose their petals, I trimmed the stalks back, sometimes way back.

And do you know what has happened? 

They have bloomed again and again and again.  The more dead stuff I cut back, the more new life explodes from the branches.  Brown and dried out Carnations that could have easily been tossed in the rot pile got a serious trimming and are filling back in with beautiful green leaves.  I'm a pruning, thinning, trimming, plucking, pulling maniac and I am seeing the results.

Not just in my garden.

The past year or so was a time of heavy pruning.  And it was scary.  There were branches of relationships that I didn't think I could live without.  There were spent blooms that had at one time been fragrant and bright but were no longer drawing nourishment.  There were even sections riddled with the "disease" of old thought patterns like self-doubt, fear, anxiety, and judgment.  Lots that needed to go.  Some that will have to be cut back repeatedly because of their propensity to regrow.  Some are tough and hard to break off and leave knotty little wounds in their place. 

Scary stuff.  Because whatever comes next has to come from what's left, from this stripped down version of me, from the roots and fibers that are deep inside. 

And do you know what has happened?

I am blooming!  Again and again and again and again and...



How about you?  Done some hard pruning lately?  Need to do some?  I'd love to hear your life gardening story!  Feel free to share in the comment section.

In a Perfect World

If I had my druthers, this website would have been populated with lots of wonderful posts full of wit and wonder, life and love, dreams and drama, (ok, I'll stop now) before I released a book advertising the blog address right there on the back of it.  Timing.  Blah.  Unfortunately, I was sideswiped by so much life and drama that I was at my wit's end.  Things didn't go as I planned.

I love blogs.  I don't actually "follow" many of them because I'm way too busy hoping people will be following mine (and parenting and what have you ;-)) but I do in fact, love them.  And I want mine to be good.  It doesn't have to be great.  It doesn't have to generate income and have four thousand ads flashing and scrolling in the margins.  I like a clean page.  Minimalistic.  But I want the content to be good and the overall feel to be encouraging, inspiring even, in the midst of the huge doses of reality because inspiration that doesn't work in real life quickly becomes condemnation, guilt, depression.  I don't know about you but I can spiral myself into those nasty places just fine without the help of "perfect world" blogs, thank you very much.  They are my least favorite blogs.

And you have to wonder, too, are those perfect people in their perfect families writing perfect blogs with perfect pictures of perfect life really...perfect?  Of course not.  I know that.  You know that.  We all know it somewhere inside but... don't you find yourself believing they are?  Just a little bit?  Or maybe even a lot?  Like enough that if you unexpectedly met them in the grocery store you would find yourself saying, "Oh my god, I love your blog!" right before PUNCHING THEM DIRECTLY IN THE FACE?  Is that just me?

Even their voices are perfect. 

What's that?  Yeah, I know I'm talking about blogs -communication in written form but when we read, we give people/characters a "voice" in our heads.  And I know when I am buying the whole perfect blog thing because I tend to give those people the most glorious voices.  They are ethereal, soft but not timid, neutral in accent, and full of the wisdom of ages.  Perfect.

When they post a picture of a perfect meal they've prepared, I somehow think that every meal in their home must be this perfect.  If they say some profound thing about parenting, I unwittingly assume that they must do this thing perfectly every. single. time.  It's stupid.  I know it's stupid.  You know it's stupid.  But I (and by that I mean "we") do it anyway.

I saw a facebook meme once that essentially said stop comparing your everyday life to other people's highlights reel.  It's the beauty and curse of social media.  We can create the image we want to present and just omit the things that are less than appealing.  I remember watching my "best moments" video thingy that FB did last year and thinking, "Wow!  I had a fantastic year!  Why does it seem so different in my head?"

I don't want you to make any of those mistake where this blog is concerned.  So, let's get some things straight.  I do not live in a perfect world.  Some days, for one split second the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and all my kids are safely occupied with some joyful activity that requires nothing but my adoring smile of affirmation.  BLINK!  The moment is gone.  Done.  Dead.  Obliterated! 

Some days barely register above tolerable but most are kind of like a bunch of white people at a wedding reception trying to do the electric slide.  One step forward, two steps back, and everyone is moving in opposite directions.  I've heard it called organized chaos.  Close.  A constant attempt to manage insanity?  Yeah, that's more like it.  

Some day I might post a photo of a delicious dinner that I've made from scratch using our homegrown farm fresh ingredients.  Something like this yummy butternut squash soup:

I love cooking and feeding my family good, real food BUT don't you think for a second there aren't nights (at least once a week) that look like this:

And I mean EXACTLY like this.  Shoot, my kids know how to use a can opener and a microwave.

Real life.  Not just the highlights.

Hopefully, the blog will fill up at a steady rate but if there's a lull -assume chaos is ruling the roost and spaghettio's are being served up a-plenty.  Oh, and if you must give me a voice, go for a lusty, southern, chain-smoker in drag.  It'll help keep your expectations in check and I won't have to fear being punched in the face at the grocery store.