A garden fable: Blooms, rain, and staying power

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CONTEXT: I am writing this on Monday July 22, 2024 for posting on Tuesday July 23, against the backdrop of Joe Biden having stepped down on Sunday July 21 from the ticket in this November’s US election.

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I’m wrestling with a big problem of my own these days. I will listen to experts and to those with more experience than I have, but, ultimately, it is I who must make the call. I am the one who created the situation and it is, therefore, I who must sort out the problem that has ensued.

While I do not control all the factors involved in the problem, I nonetheless feel — and am — responsible for it. Oh, I want things to be different. For sure, I want to have known more from the outset, to have managed the situation more expertly along the way, to have, actually, made a different call from the very beginning.

But here I am now.

Facing the hydrangeas in the raised bed in the front yard. After a wicked rain storm. The beautiful bountiful blooms are water drenched; the branches and stems bowed down from the beating they took overnight. The overall effect is sad, tired, and spent.

This is not the image I had imagined when the shrubs were first planted last October. Back then, I had imagined sturdy magnificence growing steadily, blooming endlessly, hassle free.

But here I am now.

Facing drooping top-heavy exhausted-looking shrubs.

Previously, after every other rain storm, I have dashed outside to shake off the blooms and help them to stand back up, ready to make it through another day.

But today, I feel differently. 

They will have to stand or bow on their own. If they are going to survive in this place they have landed, they need to figure it out themselves. Or I will move them in the fall to a place where they can better be themselves as they are: top-heavy beautiful bloomers that need a whole lot more support than I had realized when I first chose them to be the crowning glory against the terra cotta red of our house walls.

With time, I am coming to realize that my original plan may not be the best one over the longer term. With what I know now and can see in front of me today, I think I need to change my plan. After all, a plan is just a theory that must respond to the changing reality of its implementation.

For the moment, my hydrangeas can stay where they are. But I think that by November a new set of plants will have taken their place. Similar, but different, too: younger, more varied in colour, a whole new future for their roots to grow and to thrive in.  

At least, with what I know today, that is what I am hoping for.

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Comments

  1. MargueriteJuly 23, 2024 at 5:22 AM

    I appreciate the philosophical message in this post.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJuly 23, 2024 at 7:30 AM

    Nice metaphor

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnnJuly 23, 2024 at 10:08 AM

    Reminds me of the 60s “Bloom where you are planted.” I think that’s important on several levels. All I can do is the best I can, even when that’s not very good. 😘

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Amanda Le RougetelJuly 23, 2024 at 10:43 AM

      Very true. Doing our own very best is important -- and sometimes that means stepping aside to let the next generation in. I remember so clearly having this realization in my college teaching world -- my younger colleagues brought with them a whole different set and range of skills that the classrooms of the day needed. My skills were not bad or inferior as such, but they were not the sharpest skills anymore. I needed to either move aside or go back to school myself. I chose to step aside -- and I have found myself using my newly evolving skills in different classrooms with different students. Satisfying in every way.

      Delete
  4. MaryJuly 23, 2024 at 10:44 AM

    My Peonies droop just like that, and seem to wait until a storm is on its way to bloom. Or, it could be my imagination.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Amanda Le RougetelJuly 23, 2024 at 10:49 AM

      In my view, peonies are hydrangeas' poorly behaved show-off cousins with the ginormous blooms that too-often harbour ants...

      Delete
  5. Barbara AnneJuly 24, 2024 at 9:03 PM

    I have two different kinds, one is so frail and fragile, it barely survives winter and then struggles to grow anything. The other has branches that look much more sturdy, I have to wait and see if it survives winter. My plants do have to figure things out for themselves, I've told them "if you don't do it another plant will".

    ReplyDelete
  6. Sally ShowalterJuly 26, 2024 at 1:18 PM

    "They will have to stand or bow on their own. If they are going to survive in this place they have landed, they need to figure it out themselves." Your sentence can be used for endless means. Keep after your garden, it is beautiful.

    ReplyDelete

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