Spring in the Garden

It should come as no surprise that my approach to gardening is haphazard. Spring arrives, and I dutifully clean beds. I buy stones and bricks to rein in areas that have encroached on lawn. I see what survived the winter. I buy plants. I nurture them for a while. Then (usually) the exhaustive heat of summer arrives and my garden gets somewhat pathetic looking. Then autumn comes and I tidy again. Winter comes and it all decays again.

This year, spring is going to mean some pretty significant ripping of plants away. A big bush died this year, and it needs to be pulled up and something new planted. A tree was struck by lightning, I think. It too needs a chain saw taken to it. The fence needs repair from said tree. My vegetable gardening IS happening this year, if only because it will make my mom happy. She is planning on rose bushes, too.

All this garden talk, though, isn't so different from my writing. I generally start off with tidy little manuscripts and elegant first chapters, only to find myself at SOME point, usually in the drought of the middle, taking a chainsaw to it.

All this garden talk, actually, isn't so different from life. My life started neatly, I guess, but here I am surveying an awful lot of stuff that needs a chainsaw. This past year saw much of what I had counted on blooming for years to come instead uprooted and destroyed. I have two choices: leave the ugly detritus, or get rid of it--whether by burning it away or composting, or hauling it to the dump.

And all this garden talk, as it pertains to both writing and my life, is really about self-acceptance. Because I have friends with neat and tidy gardens. They have little nameplates for each plant dangling elegantly from copper spikes. Their rows are well-tended and weeded. Their beds have nary a stray leaf in them. I love gardens like that, much like I admire writers who can outline in neat little books or fancy software programs or storyboards, and think, "Now that is certainly a lovely way to write a book." It's a lovely way to have a garden. And their lives are certainly tidier than mine. My guess is their laundry piles never spill out from the laundry room into the upstairs hallway either. Their children are likely better behaved (at least as far as Pirate Boy goes).

But my garden and my life and my writing have always been messier. It's less about clutter, I now realize, than about energy. It's when I am full of the joy of a manuscript or my garden or my children, or life in general, I don't seem to notice how my world is swirling in a tornado until AFTER, surveying the mess. And when I am grieving, or in pain, or frightened and stressed, I don't notice either. It all just spills out of my head, my closets, and my tidy beds.

There's nothing right . . . or wrong . . . in either approach. And so, like everthing, from Ecclesiastes:

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war; and a time of peace.

And sometimes, some of us, have all of those things at once.

So how is spring shaping up for you?

I Sense a Theme . . .

What can I say? It's spring.

Yesterday, you all got a long-winded story of the transvestite canary known as Zen. Today's spring theme? My garden.

House plants? Brown thumb. I forget they're there. I have two bamboo plants, but that's it. I realized that house plants were beyond me, accepted my limitations indoors . . . and turned my attention OUTdoors, where, now that I live in a temperate climate, I am having great success. I read everything I can on gardening--and have thus chosen shade plants for the shade and full-sun plants for up front. I have Roma tomatoes, and lemon grass and basil and oregano . . . and lots of flowers.

And let me tell you, judging from my aching back after lifting heavy bags of mulch yesterday? It's hard work.

But I am never so content as when my hands are getting dirty in the earth.

Which brings me to writing. So much of gardening isn't the hard work of digging and turning the earth and planting . . . it's what you do once your plants are already in the ground. Like fertilizing (I'm going green--COMPOST). And "dead-heading"--which means plucking off the dead heads of flowers to push the little plants to grow fresh flowers. And that is like writing.

I had to figure out what worked and what didn't. I had to nurture what did work for me--and mercilessly dead-head what didn't. Dead -eading, for me, means:

• Killing my darlings--and learning what that really means
• Not keeping scenes just because I think they are clever unless it advances the plot
• Not keeping dialogue--same reason
• Pruning single words that just aren't necessary--like too many adjectives and adverbs
• CHOOSING my verbs and adjectives carefully so I can use one, not three
• Knowing when I am forcing it and letting a story grow on its own

So . . . it's spring-time. What have you had to dead-head in your own writing? What about life? I've pretty much rid myself of negative people . . . life's too short. It's spring. Time to dead-head!