I don’t garden.I plant things and do what I can to keep the weeds at bay. But the weeds usually win.
I used to care. Used to fret about weeds winning. It used to be that I couldn’t sit on the patio after working for hours in the garden, fretting and fussing and weeding, couldn’t sit down at last and just say, “Well, that looks good.”
Because I’d notice something askew. Or how the tall blue things were in front of the short yellow things.I used to care that delphiniums fell over in the rain.Then one day I got rid of the delphiniums.And anything else that was a bit precious. Or incapable of weathering the weather.The yard became less garden and more Place Where Things Grow or Don’t Grow; It’s Up To Them.Oh, what a happy day when I stopped being a gardener and started being someone who could sit on the patio at the end of the day and say, well isn’t that a lovely sight.
Without fretting about colour combinations and bloom time and height and things keeling over untidily.Untidy is hardly noticeable in my ungardenly garden. So if things are lovely, it has nothing to do with me.
After I stopped being a gardener, I sat on the patio one night and said out loud, “Well, doesn’t everything look wonderful”, and a young girl who was on the patio with me said what a funny thing for an adult to say. “Usually adults complain about things,” she said.So true.

Because we think we’re in charge.