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.