Trying to Control a Country Garden.

 

            Ever since I was a little girl I’ve always loved those messy cottage gardens.  You know the kind I mean, climbing roses arching over a trellis or up a wall, daisies, violets, and wildflowers galore.  Beautiful chaos.  When I bought my new house 13 years ago it had the standard shrubs up front, low maintenance, cookie cutter fashion.  Well I ripped those suckers out with a vision of my beautiful new garden.  (Mind you now I had attempted smaller versions before, but this one was all mine to start fresh just the way I wanted it.

 

           I planted rose bushes next to the white trellis by my front door, lavender, violets, kitchen herbs, ivy, wild flowers, you name it.  It was going to be AMAZING!  Everything had its happy place, right where common sense and all the garden volumes said they should be.  The South Alabama sun burned my lavender to a crisp (not just once or twice mind you, but MANY times) things just weren’t falling into place the way I wanted them to.  Then came the weeds.  And the grass.  Not just grass but super hulking nuclear accident grass that if it has a particle in the dirt that sucker will root 3 feet down & spread & grow forever!  I weeded, I worried, I replanted, and weeded, and weeded, and replanted some more.  I dug them up and moved them, added more roses and hibiscus, and pulled more weeds.  When my husband offered to take the weed-eater to my garden I think my head exploded.  I had worked so hard and worried so much, and it looked like a sad weed bed with a few flowers struggling through.

            Now over the years, my bad back has gotten increasingly worse.  Pulling weeds and digging just aren’t an option anymore.  ALL those years of worry, and all that back breaking work for naught.  I finally sat in the middle of that sad bed in tears and clipped down the grass, the flower heads, the spider-wort that volunteered and ran rampant but at least 2 feet too tall.  I chopped it all down.  Cut back the roses, and chopped that bed to about 6 inches tall and decided “It is what it is, I can’t control it.”.

 

            About two months later I had the most amazing flower bed!  There were flowers everywhere!  Morning glories climbing the bushes, roses blooming that I’d given up for dead, flowers I had planted so many years ago I completely forgot I had ever tried.

         

I sat down in the grass looking at that beautiful bit of God’s work, again with tears in my eyes.

I finally realized, some things AREN’T in my control!  No matter how much I work and slave (and yes there were times that with my injured back I couldn’t walk for days because I HAD to fix that garden!  “What would the neighbors think?”)  Every time I walked past that flower bed - which meant every time I went in or out of my house - I would smile at a few blossoms but still feel so bad about the chaos that was overwhelming me.  It was a reminder of the chaos that felt like it was overwhelming my life.  SO much is out of my control.  I’d lay at night and worry about all the typical things that we all make ourselves crazy with, but there was still that garden.  The symbol of my worries

 

            Now, everyone who knows me knows I’m a little hard-headed.  Even my doctors laugh at me sometimes because I know better.  It took me years of working until I couldn’t walk, surgery, damage to the extent that I couldn’t bend over to stop and even smell my roses.  Was it enough?  Almost.  I finally stubbed my little toe on a wooden chest.  No biggie right?  Who goes to the doctor for that?  I hobbled with a cane and took them trick or treating, walked the hospital halls for a week while my Mom was there.  It sure made that back and neck pain worse, but hey you do what you’ve gotta do right?  As my daughter put it, “I come from a long line of ‘walk it off’.”.  When I went back for a regular check-up for my back 3 weeks later they insisted on an x-ray of my still swollen toe and black and blue foot.  Yes, I’d been walking on a broken foot for 3 weeks!  But I got a lovely new post-surgical boot to wear through the holidays so I could avoid foot surgery too!  (Yes, the doctor & nurses all agree this is not a good thing to just walk off, thanks, I’ve been reminded)

            It took ALL OF THAT to make me sit down, shut up, and pay attention to what REALLY needed to be worried about.  You know what I found?  Nothing.  Oh yea, I still freak myself out on a regular basis, but I remind myself that “Just for today, I will not worry”.  We can do pretty much anything for a day right?  So now that I have been forced to sit down and take it easy by almost everything the Universe could throw at me – I go hobble outside, I look around.  I have everything I need at this very moment.

Take a moment to stop and smell the flowers, literally!  Then try to worry.

            I spent years working, worrying and making myself sick just to see that beautiful, messy garden come to fruition when I finally left it alone.  When I finally stopped worrying.  When I finally let go of trying to control it all.  The Universe has been a pretty spectacular place since long before I got here.  I only hope that when I move on someone sees a random flower growing somewhere wild and free, and they take a moment to stop and smile, and enjoy it right where it is in all it’s glory.  In the end, the messy part of that country garden was me.  It had it under control the whole time.

Happiness is a Beautiful Garden!