When I started gardening five years ago, I wondered how I would learn what I need to know, and how many plants would have to die for my ineptitude. Turns out, I didn’t have to worry. Plants have a way of surviving in spite of me (most of the time), and the garden itself tells me what I need to learn next.
In the past few weeks, the lesson has been prune! prune! prune!
I’m thinking in particular of two plants: wallflower and lavatera. They’re gorgeous, flamboyant, and flagrant in their willingness to hog all the space. In one spot, I have one of each right next to each other, duking it out for survival.
The Internet, that source of all knowledge, assures me I can cut them back…in the fall. Now, though, I’m at least allowed to remove the spent blooms, so I’ve been doing that, though I manage to snip away at some of the crazy growth as I do so.
I’m not worried about it. I can’t seem to kill these guys.
Indoors, I am pruning as well. We just took a big load of stuff to Goodwill. I’m selling items I no longer need or want. There’s the spinning wheel I bought when I thought I would spend evenings in front of the television, spinning my hair into gold or something like that. There’s the camcorder I bought to film the yoga videos I’ve never made.
I’m “unfollowing” a lot of pages and people on Facebook, and I’ve even unfriended a few people. It’s not personal. I just tend to spend too much time there, and/or I get too upset by what I see. I need to protect my mood in order to write.
Bit by bit, I am confessing to myself that I am not going to accomplish everything in this life I set out to do. It’s time to scale back, to prune away what keeps me from doing what really matters to me: writing books.
“We’re getting older,” a friend of mine tells me. “We just can’t do it all.”
So I cut back. I prune. And, like the wallflower and lavatera, I won’t die from it.
Yes Nadine, you are so correct about pruning… plants and “things” in our life. I had quite a bit of pruning to do prior to moving into this rental. Some things I regret losing and other things stay buried in my closet as I can’t put them up on the walls here. Particularly with you moving between New York and here it will be interesting to learn how your interest change. Very thought-provoking post! Good for you! 😉
When I met Henry, he was living in a bigger house that was just jammed with “stuff.” We’ve moved three times since then, and the first two homes were much smaller. We’ve gone through rounds and rounds of downsizing. This house is a bit big for the two of us, but we host guests for local non-profits, so we’ve been able to justify the space. I think the New York adventure will be very telling. We’re already thinking about what we need to take with us. We want to travel light but still have things with us that we will… Read more »
I’ve been doing a bit of that, too. Getting rid of things. It’s nice.
Yeah…feels good, doesn’t it?
Hi,
Sometimes I think we have just too much stuff that clutter our lives and hold us back. For some time now, I have been throwing out and passing on. If I haven’t used it within a year, then it goes.
I feel very good about that and I am experiencing freedom.
Shalom,
Pat Garcia
Hi, Pat, I think the “one year” rule is a great one. We started downsizing back in 2005, and it’s been a regular occurrence for us since. My in-laws had a bit of a hoarding problem, and my husband and I were the ones to clean out the house after they died. It wasn’t fun!