One of dozens of Japanese anemones dispatched to my garden. Photo by Barbara Newhall
By Barbara Falconer Newhall
Full disclosure: I call it my garden, but I'm not the gardener. Not really. I don't plant things. I don't do the big weeding. I don't make plants grow or buds blossom. I leave that to Jillian the gardener, our trusty sprinkler system, and "the force that through the green fuse drives the flower."
Still, I like to think of it as my garden. It's my special place. It's planted with the pinks and purples that are my personal palette. It has the blousy, unkempt look that I like, punctuated by interesting rocks and some rock garden classics (isotoma, succulents, snapdragons, blue-eyed grass).
I look at this garden first thing in the morning when I open the bedroom shutters. I peek at it over the fence when I go out to get the mail. I pull the occasional weed and deadhead a fading blossom from time to time, and on a good day I might take a few minutes off from touting my new book to pick flowers and bring them indoors.
It's summer's end now in California and the garden has lost its delicate spring look. The Japanese anemones have gone mad. The star jasmine is fat and aggressive with greenery. The
This fern was not my idea. It just showed up. Photo by Barbara Newhall
isotoma is sprawling out in the spaces between the steppingstones. And everywhere the wild strawberry vines are slipping their red and succulent fingers between the leaves of their more demure neighbors.
Jillian keeps eyeing those Japanese anemones. Left undisturbed they would march right down the garden slope and take the place over. But I won't let her remove them completely.
My friend Bob Rothe planted them when my daughter was still a toddler. That means those anemones have been going at it for nearly thirty years now, pushing the
Isotoma and wild strawberry compete. Photo by Barbara Newhall
envelope, grabbing up space in my front yard, staying just this side of out of control. Bob died some years ago. But his anemones live on.
I wonder, have they survived because I want them to? Am I really in charge here? Or is this yet another chance for me to embrace radical acceptance and hand things over to our steadfast sprinkler system and the intentions of Dylan Thomas's oh-so-persistent force?
c 2015 Barbara Falconer Newhall. All Rights Reserved.
A version of this story first appeared on BarbaraFalconerNewhall.com, where Barbara riffs on life and her rocky spiritual journey. Barbara is a veteran newspaper journalist whose stint as a religion beat reporter in the San Francisco Bay Area inspired her newly released interfaith book "Wrestling with God: Stories of Doubt and Faith."
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