I have a photograph of the first garden we planted back on Leonard Street. It was along the back fence, next to the wood house, and it was a fairly good size for a backyard garden. It was a vegetable garden.  

In the photograph my husband is hoeing, with our three-year-old son nearby, and he too is trying to hoe but with a tool that is longer than he is. It is a touching photograph, but the garden was pretty much a disaster. The tomatoes were eaten by some kind of worm or bug, and the corn leaned over like a half-hearted question mark. The clay soil made the beans struggle to survive, and whatever else did manage to come forth the squirrels descended upon for their own consumption, meager meal though it was.

So we quit gardening after that, and just kind of kept the grass cut, the bushes trimmed as best we could, and each spring my youngest son picked me a bouquet of lilies of the valley which were nestled in the thicket at the edge of our property.  

Fast forward over our children’s childhood, and all that happened along the way. When our youngest entered high school, I found my way back to the soil on our property. I began digging and nourishing and weeding and planting. 

It started with a small area next to the back door, where I planted some bright perennials, and as I delighted in their color and beauty, I began to expand my efforts to other parts of the yard, so that I eventually had four flower gardens. Each was surrounded by field stones which I either bought or discovered on walks near my house or along the beaches of Lake Michigan.

When spring came, I couldn’t wait to put on my old jeans and a sweatshirt and my worn-out hiking boots so that I could get dirty in my gardens as I pushed aside the leaves and tried to encourage the new sprouts. I had to discern which were weeds and some weeds I even allowed to remain—a few English daisies and some Queen Anne’s lace and silver dollars. My daughter once described my garden to someone as “wild and eclectic, kind of like the gardens you see behind old houses in England.”  I liked that description.

Shortly thereafter my younger sister caught the “bug” of gardening. We commiserated on the struggles to clear out a good spot, and took delight in the creativity ignited in us as we debated what to plant. She scorned the neighbors who had their landscaping gardens done by professionals, proclaiming that gardening is like life—you have to get dirty and involved with the earth in order to take any credit for the beauty you manage to coax from it.

We have been bombarded with so many metaphors about gardening and life. For myself, I think I am one of those who had to find a way to nurture when my children needed less nurturing. Or maybe the garden was just my metaphorical parenting as I pulled weeds that represented some kind of negative influence and planted seeds that could potentially become moments of glory.  

I remember a story that delighted my daughter when she was small. It was one of those children’s books that was chosen over and over again to be read at bedtime. The name of the book was Miss Rumphius. It was about a woman who planted lupines, and they spread and spread all over the hillside. She planted them because all through her childhood her grandfather told her that her task in life was to “make the world more beautiful.” 

Some small corner of the earth makes someone smile or catch their breath because of your effort and passion and love. True of gardening and parenting both.