ON GARDENING AND RELATIONSHIPS: It always amazes me how we can create stuff. One of Mariam Webster Dictionary definitions of creation is: the act of making, inventing, or producing: as an original work of art. My mom always loved gardens. As I was growing up, I can’t recall the many times she would call out to me to come see her garden. She would go on and on about this flower or that plant, explaining to me what it was called, where she got it or how it came to be in her possession and why. Sometimes her passion for her garden was much greater than my interest in knowing about it, something I have come to regret as I grow older. My husband and I were married in 1978. Soon after, I told him I wanted a garden. Not a flower garden, but a real vegetable garden. “What will you plant in it?” he asked. “I want carrots, lettuce, okra, tomatoes, and bell peppers for sure.” I replied. “Carrots and lettuce and okra?” came his indignant reply. “Why would you want to plant carrots and lettuce when you can get those at the store much cheaper than what it would cost you to plant? Just the cost in water would be greater than the cost of the vegetables. And okra? Who eats okra?” I was hurt. This was my first garden, and I wanted it to succeed. More than that, I wanted his support. It was as if his support would ensure the success of my garden. Couldn’t he understand that? So I went about preparing to plant my garden. First I tilled the ground to ensure the good soil from underneath came up to the surface. Then I watered it real good. I waited a few days and spread cow manure on my little plot and tilled and watered again. After that I formed rows with and planted my seeds, spacing them apart so they wouldn’t choke each other. Days later, the plants started coming out. I weeded, hoed, watered and faithfully tended my garden. My puny garden did succeed, and I did spend more time, money and energy than I should have on it. And of course, my husband was right. Years later, I planted another garden. This one on an acre of land; I planted watermelon, cantaloupe, Armenian cucumbers that grew a foot or more, long, tomatoes, bell pepper, Jalapenos, corn, potatoes, and some other stuff I don’t remember. That summer and for the next three years, we had so much produce coming out of our garden. We ate all we could out of that garden, then gave away to all our neighbors in the farm community we lived in. Then we took the excess to town and gave it away to friends and family. Still the garden kept giving. We gave it away to random people. There was so much! And I was so proud of my garden. To eat the goodness of something I had created was joy for the sake of joy. I loved what I had created and the feelings that came with it. In 2003 my husband and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. People asked me, “What is your secret to a long happy marriage?” What they were asking me was: “How did you create such beautiful garden?” I told them . “Marriage is like a garden. If you want it to succeed, you have to plan. You prepare the ground in the dating process, but after the marriage, you must not abandon your garden. You have to till it and bring up all the good stuff. You have to bring up the good stuff periodically in order to keep your garden giving back to you. Then you have to be selective of what seeds you want to plant. If you plant random seeds, you will get random stuff. But if you plant good seeds, you will get the most pleasure out of your work. Then you have to invest. You must invest time, energy, care, and money. You must also work your garden. You have to protect it from the elements, the outside influences that can harm it like “friends”, family, work, or just random stuff. (I can’t tell how many times I would come home from work or school, tired, beat up, and just exhausted from the everyday hum drum. My husband would take one look at me and just stretch out his arms to me. I’d fall into them, and he would just hold me. That was enough! To know that if everyone and everything was against me, there was one person in the world who would be there for me through thick and thin was priceless.) You have to weed out all the negative stuff, all the things that don’t contribute to your garden but would choke the life out of it. You have to water it so that it doesn’t die, so that the nutrients from the ground will feed it. Dating after marriage, caring actions, and things that make your spouse feel special are all contributors to your successful garden. If a person is willing to work their garden, in time, they will have so much reward from their garden, so much goodness, that they will not be the only ones enjoying its goodness, but all the people around them will also enjoy it. The feeling of having a good marriage garden is beyond words. “ That has been my advice to every marriage. It was a lesson long in coming and it took years of experience to make the connection, but I am glad for the understanding of it. So, as you can see, I love gardens. I love art. I love to invent and create and produce. My husband and I have been married 35 years this February, and I love my marriage garden.
Posted on: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 01:53:32 +0000
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