Years ago, a former neighbor’s daughter-in-law (perhaps in her late sixties at the time (though I am terrible at guessing someone’s age (she could have been twenty three)) interrupted her walk to stop and chat as I was cutting some flowers from my long, roadside border.

She began a bit of small talk, but seemed somewhat distracted. Then, in the midst of cursing the recent rains, she walked straight into the garden and plucked a weed. I think it was a weed but, to be honest, I’m not really sure. Because before I could register what exactly she had ripped from the ground, she held up her conquest and said – out loud and I am not kidding – “With all you spend on this garden, it is ridiculous that your help doesn’t do a better job.”

Two things leapt to mind.

1. How did she know my gardening budget? I’d managed to keep it a secret from my Nearly Perfect Husband for years. This was very concerning.

2. You don’t ‘get’ this garden.

And she didn’t. But I didn’t correct her, instead choosing to watch the comment waft away on the sea breeze.

This garden isn’t about perfection. Never was.

To me, it is a garden of wondrous incongruity.

It is a sanctuary for me, but mostly when I’m working on it, rather than relaxing within it.

It was not conceived of, or created to, impress anyone. And yet, I love that it distributes free smiles to passers by.

And it is not the result of a gardener needing an outlet to garden, but of an overwhelmed, grief-stricken human who needed to become a gardener.

Did I know any of this – especially that last bit – when I first envisioned this garden, nearly two decades ago?

Nope.

But I can connect the dots…

Backward.

In 2005, The Nearly Perfect Husband and I impulsively bought a (this) house on the midcoast of Maine. It was one of those crazy moments when we both realized we were in our place, though it was a place we’d never been. There were so many reasons why this was a crazy idea.

It was three hours north of where we lived, and it was a very old house (‘born’ in 1830).

We knew nothing about old houses.

Which meant we knew less about old, very neglected houses.

Some would have run, and maybe we would have run… but for this overwhelming something that – at once – descended upon, and seemed to well up from deep inside me, on my first visit here.

I was down by the water – alone – in this place both beautiful and unblushingly flirtatious. I turned to look back up toward the house, when I was left breathless by what I can only describe as an ‘if you build it he will come’ moment.

To be clear, I’m an introvert. I didn’t really want anyone to come. But the message to ‘build it’ was very powerful.

A garden.

My Self erupted in goosebumps. I remember the feeling as if it were right now.

There needs to be a garden here.

I could actually see it.

Many small gardens, woven into a whole. Informal… delightful … peaceful.

There were borders and beds, trees… and stone walls and patios and fences and gates.

Insects, wildlife…

Flora welcoming fauna.

Except bears.

And I saw all of this, even as my gaze drifted over what could only be described as… a mess.

Long, weed-infested grass growing up to dilapidated outbuildings… scrub and saplings… free-roaming invasive vines overwhelming old, towering trees. There was even a broken, in-ground pool in the back yard, with roots and who-knows-what growing up through the cracks.

I had exactly no business envisioning a garden here, let alone persuading and/or toiling one into being.

I was not of gardening stock. Not even a little bit.

I think my mother tried planting morning glories once, to disguise the steel cable that helped support the telephone pole in our front yard.

I killed every single houseplant anyone ever kindly gave me (to be fair, I pretty much still do).

I didn’t even have a beloved Aunt or distant grandmotherly type who, in my childhood, brought me out to… like… hoe things.

Also, I had no time.

Who was I to take on a years-long restoration and renovation of an old house at that point, let alone the design and creation of a garden that would take decades or more to come into its own?

But Inspiration does not always conduct herself as a rational being.

And I have found, more times than I care to admit, that she – Inspiration – often knows more than I do.

The thing is, when I say I had no time, I’m not exaggerating. I could, in fact, be underselling the idea.

This is what happens, sometimes, when you bury some things that need processing, and overfill your plate with other things… hoping to knock your toughest stuff off (and never have to think about it, or feel about it, again).

Buckle up. 

My mother and sister died – both suddenly, and only five days apart – in the summer of 2001. That was it. My entire immediate family (my father left when we were young) gone. Our relationships, and the wake of them, were very complicated. There was a lot that was hard, a lot that was painful, and a lot that was just plain messy.

And so, like any good Type A, workaholic-y personality with a blind spot when it came to self compassion, I threw myself into a heck of a lot of, well, everything over the next few years.

Oh. I’m not kidding.

♦ I’d left my big deal, international corporate job only shortly before, so was still figuring out who I was if I didn’t have a catchy title to pre-introduce myself to anyone who asked, ‘What do you do?’. While I was very (very) fortunate to be able to stay at home at that time (see next bullet), old habits – and identities – are stubborn things.

♦ I was immersed in learning and doing everything I could relative to my seven year old son’s physical/medical and learning disabilities (I know, I know, I’m supposed to say ‘differences’ and, sure, some came with pretty spectacular superpowers; but others were flat out disabilities), and how to navigate the worlds of medicine and academia in this new (to us) light.

♦ We bought a piece of land, and I set upon a year-plus long project of designing and building a new house for all of us, including Granny and Grampa. We had experts and crews to create said house, but every permit application, design approval, and building and interior design decision was mine… right down to the knobs on the kitchen cabinets (the choosing of which broke me into tears (I just couldn’t make one more decision)).

♦ We moved.

♦ I got mad at a Town Meeting, and ended up running for selectman (and, but for thirteen people not switching their votes to me, I – a relative unknown with extraordinarily little town governing experience – would have won (I owe those voters a thank you, as – possibly – does the town).

♦ I joined up with a group of incredibly talented women and we started a non-profit education foundation.

♦ I agreed to be co-President of said foundation.

♦ I found an extraordinary, very specialized school for my son, an hour away, and added a twenty hour weekly commute to my schedule (and that was if he didn’t forget his homework).

♦ I accepted a position on the Board of the local land trust.

♦ We had a multigenerational house, and caretaking was ramping up for Granny and Grampa.

♦ I was pretty committed to the whole Mom to three kids, four dogs, and four cats – and all that could/would/might generally entail – things.

♦ We bought a deteriorating, very old house (and barn) on the coast of Maine, and decided to bring it back to life.

Yeah.

That list is not a brag.

I am not one who ever thought there was cache – or, dear Lord, virtue – in being ‘busy busy busy’ to the point of risking my own health (or the health of my family).

Didn’t mean I wasn’t doing it though.

Didn’t mean I didn’t need to stop.

Things were going to break.

I was going to break.

Today I believe that my response to the loss of my mother and sister (and then the grief of not having all of my kids healthy) was to just get busy… then busier… then so busy to the point where it was untenable simply in terms of hours in a day. I did not have time for grief (nor the self-reflection needed to know I hadn’t truly processed it). Basically, I could not see or feel what I didn’t have time to see (or feel).

I was putting one foot in front of the other, and swinging at the curveballs as best I could.

Don’t get me wrong. There was a lot of  laughter, and love, and gratitude, and crazy-wonderful family chaos that permeated those years. But my Self was disappearing into the busy, and I was a willing accomplice. I could have been doing the work toward Phoenixing my way out of, or beyond the grief. Instead I was just postponing that work (that inevitable work).

Then we drove to Maine that fateful Memorial Day weekend.

And Inspiration showed up, whispering about a garden, but camouflaging her overall scheme just enough.

She was so clear, so insistent. She showed me something so alluring that it’s had to put words to it (beyond ‘alluring’). It was a call – not even so much toward the garden, but toward the process necessary to get to the garden.

To answer her call, I would have to let some of my commitments come to their natural end, and – gasp – not replace them with others. Stuff could – oh how I want to say ‘literally’ here (but I won’t) –  slide off my plate.

And here’s the thing.

It wasn’t that restoring and renovating a nearly 200 year old house (and barn), then designing and creating an extensive garden for that homestead was going to be nothing (or easy). I was going to be busy.

But I was going to be a different kind of busy.

And if I wanted to get to the garden, I had to work on – and finish (at least to a certain point) – the house first.

Get the house in order… get my house in order… and only then, the garden.

The Maine house was three hours, door-to-door, from our house.

That meant that I spent six hours in the car – sometimes once a week, sometimes every few weeks – when I came up to meet with the contractors and/or have a look at their progress.

That meant six hours of time to think, to process… to fold it all in (‘It’ being life stuff, not necessarily house or gardens stuff (and, yes, that was a nod to Schitt’s Creek)).

Over three years.

We’d broken down the restoration into three phases, stopping each June and restarting each September so we could enjoy the place during the summers (and give our neighbors a break in the construction so they could enjoy theirs).

I can’t say that the process – building or folding in – was stress-free, every big (well, and small) building/renovation/restoration project has its moments, but it was not – oddly – stress-full.

I don’t know how, but life was so much more balanced – especially in the really important ways of family and friends – than it had been in years.

And then, finally, when the last of the construction trucks and folks left, and there was practically no lawn and huge ruts from big trucks in the dirt and mud outside… I got my hands (and brain) on the garden.

But, by that time, I was in a completely different mindset than I would have been if I could have jumped right in and tackled the project three years before.

If I had done it earlier, it would have been just another project to get ‘done’.

As it happened, from the start, it was a creative undertaking, a blissful unfolding.

With a little bit of a learning curve.

I read and researched and sketched and mapped and visited friend’s gardens and asked questions (oh so many questions).

I learned about structure and order and hardscape and softscape. I referenced hardiness zones and native plants and wildlife and the color wheel and balance. And – this is no small thing – I began to understand the importance of slowing down, slowing waaaaaay down, to consider… to choose… to weigh the options of this against that… to plan.

I hired a landscape company, and one of the owners was a young landscape architect who was not only talented enough to collaborate with me in coming up with phase one of the overall garden plan, but patient enough to explain the whats, wheres, whens, and whys of her suggestions. She gently corrected any of my misunderstandings, and taught me by her example.

I still work with her today. And her crews are still the help I call upon when I need it.

But now I draw up the plans, create the planting lists, design new hardscape features… trust my vision even when others can’t quite see how it will all come together.

The unfolding of this garden is the result of an internal journey. It was – is – never about external validation.

This garden belongs to an amateur gardener and her Nearly Perfect Husband who digs the occasional hole and mows the lawns and is excellent about oo-ing and ah-ing and not fainting when I start my sentences with ‘I was thinking…’ . It also belongs to a little kid, and dogs… our family.

Also deer and mink and bees and butterflies and fireflies and squirrels and hawks and eagles and a very old chipmunk with half a tail.

The very occasional moose and bobcat too.

Inspiration got her point across, some twenty years ago.

I just had to connect the dots backward to see it.

This garden – often a riot of chaos itself over the years – pulled me out of my own chaos. It has also provided the quiet moments needed to process many more life-y happenings and circumstances since its inception.

It has healed me, comforted me, and continues to astonish me with wonder, in all seasons.

It also inspires me toward creative pursuits beyond itself (I didn’t pick up a ‘real’ camera, or start to write, before this garden was… maybe… five years old).

It is – just as Inspiration showed me it could be – informal, and delightful, and peaceful.

It is also deeply personal.

So, and I’ll bet you already know this…

I’m good with the weeds.

Thanks for readin’.

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