Life Lessons from the Garden

Those who've seen my recent Facebook posts, are aware of my newfound interest in gardening. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, I think we’ve all longed to be outdoors and not be confined to the four walls of an apartment.

 

Long story short, I recently inherited a very vibrant flower-garden, complete with two kinds of hibiscus trees, and red, white and pink roses bushes. Let’s just say that the mornings are very colorful. And I was exchanging flower pics with my good friend Leslie, a more experienced gardener, who's been mentoring me, and she suggested that I stay on top of deadheading my flowers. Of course, I had NO idea what this meant. In fact, until a few weeks ago, I had very little interest in flowers unless it was February 14th.

So all of you who are novices like me, deadheading means: to remove dead flower heads from a plant to encourage further blooming. The idea is that energy that goes into trying to maintain the dying flower head can actually be put towards a newer and healthier bloom. Immediately, I thought: there’s a profound life lesson to be learned here. At one time or another, we’ve all been told this message in different ways. 

 

 Focus of the positive not the negative.

Close old doors and new doors will open.

Clear your mind so that your spirit can shine. 

 

You get the point.

As I interpreted this whole deadheading thing from a philosophical perspective, I saw it as being about letting go. Better yet: letting go of the past and embracing the here and now so that you can enjoy a bloom-.heavy future. Furthermore, it’s about getting rid of that which can no longer serve its original purpose in a positive way.

 

In the beginning deadheading was very difficult for me. Even though the flowers were brown and shriveled, and obviously past their prime, I somehow felt I was destroying a valuable part of the flower. One might call this a type of botanical hoarding. We all know that this type of thinking extends far beyond the garden. We hold on to hole-ridden t-shirts, worn shoes, old magazines, you name it. Things that should have been thrown out five years earlier. Not to mention the emotional junk we carry around. That thing someone said to you ten years ago. That record date you didn't get the call. That tour that your student got picked to do over you. Again, withered leaves that should be deadheaded instead of being allowed to contaminate your daily vine.

 So here are the three life lessons from the garden I learned:

1.     If it’s unhealthy, get rid of it. Save the good, not the bad.
2.     It’s all about re-directing the energy away from the unhealthy, towards the healthy bloom.
3.     If you don’t get rid of the dead flowers, they will only get in the way. 

The funny thing is that once you get rid of them, you immediately forget that they were ever there. Junk is funny that way.