Sermon on gardening as a metaphor for life

July 28

Susan Appleget Hurst

I once heard of an old orchardist who always advised his helpers that when they were doing their winter pruning of the apple trees, they should check their work by throwing their hats into the tree, and if the hat got caught they hadn't pruned enough. 

Actually, I think the original advice was that if you threw a cat through the tree and it got caught you hadn't pruned enough, but I think I prefer the hat version myself. 

That's a pretty severe pruning.  Any branches that are crossed, or touching another branch, any branch growing straight up, anything that was diseased or damaged needs to be removed.  The pruning needs to be done cleanly and carefully so as not to create more problems in the future.  And when it’s done right, they are very few branches left, but each one becomes strong and will produce a lot of fruit.  In order for the tree to grow well, you have to make sure that the branches are growing out horizontally, and that there aren’t too many of them. There needs to be enough room for the sun to shine down through the middle of the tree, and to allow for good air circulation.  There has to be enough space between the branches so that you can apply sprays.  If the tree gets too tall and long-limbed, then you can't reach the top branches to harvest or to care for the tree in the future.  After a number of years, the tree branches look a little gnarly, but purposeful.  It looks focused and healthy -- not a lot of twigs sticking out in crazy angles, no wounds from crossed branches rubbing into each other. 

Most new gardeners I know are very reluctant to prune.  They see the tree growing rapidly, and they want it to produce lots of apples, so they feel that the more productive you want that tree to be, then the more branches you have to have in order to bear more fruit.  Unfortunately, it just doesn't work out that way. Sunlight needs to reach into the interior of the tree, and horizontal branches produce well and are less likely to be damaged in a storm.  Apples are prone to disease when they don't have good air circulation.  We have so strictly limited the varieties of apple trees that we have, so that they are much more complicated to care for.  Did you know that every popular apple variety that you see in the store or the orchard came from a clone, which came from a clone, which came from a clone who knows how far back.  All that inbreeding, and the narrowly defined genetic pool, make them all too much alike and leads to a lot of disease problems.

So many homeowners, in their well-meaning innocence and ignorance, fail to prune their apple trees hard enough.  And after a few short years they end up with a complicated mess that is hard to care for, not very healthy, and will take a few more years to sort out.  Just like anything else --  if you stay on top of the pruning, each successive year the pruning becomes easier, the structure of the tree becomes more defined, and the productivity of the tree remains as high as it can be.  If you let that pruning go for a few years it becomes a heck of a chore.  But with attention and patience, after two or three years you can get the tree cleaned up again and it'll be growing well. 

Since knowing how to prune takes a lot of time and experience, and repeated effort season after season, you can’t expect perfect results overnight.   Young trees may need corrective pruning.  Over the years you find that you'll have to prune much harder than you think you will to get down to the essence of the tree, but the resulting fruit from that tree is bigger and healthier and the harvests year after year become more rewarding.

Call it simple living for apples.  By removing the tree’s distractions -- too many branches and too many leaves -- you leave room for the basics of sunlight and air and space that it needs to produce fruit and live a long and healthy life. 

I like pruning trees.  I like pulling weeds too.  In fact I'd rather pull weeds than mow the lawn, when I have a choice, that is.  I'm sure in some ways those activities give me a sense of control, which satisfies my ego.  But by the end of those activities my ego needs seem to dissipate as my focus comes down to the plant and what else it might need, and how it feels in my hands, and how the wet earth smells.  Whatever sense of control I may have had when I started the task, I come to realize that it is nothing more than just that -- a feeling that I'm in charge.  It has nothing to do with the tree.  In Emerson's words that we heard earlier                      

These roses under my window

make no reference to former roses

or to better ones; they are for what

they are

They simply are.  Flowers take no pride in their beauty. Weeds take no shame when we express our disdain.  We choose what we see as beauty or as ugliness.  We have to decide what we really want to be growing at our gardens.  The world seems somehow simpler and the essentials of life more apparent when nurturing beautiful plants or growing your own food.  Gardens and gardening have been informal therapies for those sick at mind or heart for centuries.  The field known as horticultural therapy has only recently become regarded as a profession, though even city dwellers can tell you how the cycles of weather and nature govern their daily lives and effect their emotions.  The innate connection to the earth and to all of creation is, I believe, at the root of our romance with the family farm or the notion of a simple, rural life being a natural one.  We long for a spiritual connection to the earth and all creation, although our egos and cultural contrivances can often set up some mighty big distractions to keep from remembering that the connection is always there.  When we’re ready for it, the world is waiting for us to pay attention. 

Good gardeners know that you have to have the right plant in the right place.  You can't buy just what ever you see at the Garden Center and plug in the yard because you think it would look good there. 

The house I moved into three years ago had been professionally landscaped some years before we bought it.  A large perennial bed was installed in one corner of the back yard, and spirea, lythrium, roses and peonies were arranged around the house.  I have to say I’d have some questions for the designer of that landscape.  In the shaded, driest part of the yard they had planted spirea and astilbes.  Spirea like a moist but not soggy soil and full sun, and astilbes absolutely require moist soil and shade.  The astilbes, would always make a good effort in the spring, if there was enough rain, but their feathery plumes would barely appear each season, as the plants would never seem to get enough water to be able to compete with the spirea. 

Someday I will write a book called “Gardening Without Sun or Water.”  In the meantime, I choose to move the plants somewhere more suitable. So I dug the astilbes out from between the spirea, and looked around for a place to put them in the yard that would allow them to be a lot happier, and not always on the verge of collapse.  A new place that has some shade most of the time, but a little bit of sunlight would be all right, and the soil has to be fairly moist most of the time without relying on frequent irrigation.  I don’t happen to have very many spaces like that in my yard. 

Sometimes, you just can’t seem to find the right spot for it, and you have to give it away to a good home.  Or sometimes you move that plant around from place to place over a few years trying to find the best spot for it.  Like that's less stressful than dying of thirst next to a big, mean spirea!  So it ends up dying anyway.  Plants will tell you what they want, if you’ll put the plant’s needs ahead of your own.  

It's a bit of an art, developing a green thumb.  There's more to successful gardening than just knowing the facts, and sometimes you just have to become the plant.  When did that astilbe look happiest?  What conditions seemed to make it indifferent or miserable?  I know where I wanted the astilbes to live, but they didn’t always seem to appreciate my efforts.  Oh, that’s right – I’m the one with the ego. 

Is a green thumb a gift?  Some people think it is, but I believe that it really comes down to understanding that every organism, every human being, every situation has its own special needs.  Everything has own magic at that moment and that's what green thumb gardeners have.  They understand the magic involved in that seed that grows into a plant.  The beauty that the Creator gave to that moment, or that experience.  The process of gardening, the journey – that’s the point of it all.  All the knowledge in the world doesn't make you wise, we all know that.  It's how you listen with your heart.  It’s the time you step outside of yourself and stop thinking about your needs and instead think about what has to be done for that plant  -- or that child or your partner or your neighbor.

An author named Michael Pollan writes in his book Second Nature that there are three main causes of failure in gardening.  According to Pollan, one reason for failure in gardening is due to acts of God .  Something drastic happened that you had absolutely no control over.  You were blindsided.  You knew it was possible that that bad thing could happen because they happened to someone else before.  You just didn't think they would happen to you.  The storm that shoots holes in your hostas, flattens your cornfields, and makes the yard look like coleslaw.  The soaking rain that's far beyond the average rainfall for the season. The dry winds that seem like they'll never end, making the leaves of the trees begin to fold and the grass blades turn dull and crunchy. That's what average climate data is all about after all.  We have to learn to ride the waves of ups and downs in temperature and rainfall and our lives.

I don't know who said it but I think it’s correct to say that the one thing that we have learned from the past is that we don't learn from the past.  We seldom remember to take time and learn from disappointment or tragedy.  We take those events as flukes, as bad luck, and because it's viewed as an act of God we remove ourselves from the equation and presume that it did not have any real meaning.  Often our first reaction to tragedy is to react -- not to reflect.  Learning is hard work and the hardest lessons are the most valuable. 

The two other causes of garden problems that Michael Pollan talks about in his book Second Nature are the results of our overcultivation or our undercultivation. 

Overcultivation is when you try to control every facet of nature so as to grow a very specific plant in a very specific place and a very specific style.  We sometimes want a certain ‘look’, even if it takes an inordinate amount of time and resources and work to make that happen.  I have no slide projector, so I want you to imagine in your head the gardens at Versailles.  Or on this continent, a golf course in Phoenix.  Growing the same plant in the same place for many successive seasons could also be overcultivation, but still comes down to trying to maintain tight control of a situation in the face of certain natural laws that must be obeyed.  Tenacious control over a situation, sometimes just to prove that you can, leads to long-term consequences. 

Over fertilization, water shortages,

        nervous exhaustion, lawsuits,

                 government regulation, too many zucchini.

 And under cultivation? Well, that's when you refuse to affect anything at all by withdrawing from the world out of fear and insecurity, or by denying any responsibility or obligation.  Undercultivation could be letting the weeds take over the garden you didn’t plant, or it could be letting a business use the earth’s resources without regard for the consequences.

Do you ever feel that way?  Like just giving up?  It's easier to quit when a few bad turns happen, a disaster perhaps.  What's the point?  The sun will still rise tomorrow, the rain will eventually fall, the breeze will still blow, but you won't be enjoying any of it.  You have had enough.  You did your best, and all seems for naught.  “What the hell, nobody cares but me and I’m tired of caring!  I'll just sit here in the cold in the dark and chill out for a while.”

It may take a long time, but then one day, some small miracle, some tiny sprout, a spark of beauty brings you back.  To a reasonable person, that's what is to be expected, for that is what always happens eventually.  For myself, it is the basis of my faith in the idea that every action I take will have a consequence.  It’s precisely because I expect the sun to come up tomorrow that I am awestruck by the power that my actions can have.  No action exists in isolation.  The ripples of consequence continue out and deflect or meld with other ripples.  Every seed I plant or save makes a difference in some way.  Every moment of time spent in one endeavor is no longer available to another.   Every moment has meaning.

Gardening gives me strong muscles and aches and pains, sweet berries and sweet memories.  It has also given me the knowledge that we all matter, that everything we do has a consequence, and that we can direct our actions toward a harvest of important consequences. 

I hope you have a splendid harvest.