I’m not good at gardening. In fact, I’m so bad at it that I entered the summer season this year with the simple goal of not killing my plants. That’s it. I don’t even seek abundance, I simply seek a form of life that is barely hanging on. And some days in life, isn’t that also how you get by? By a thread?

I’m gonna walk you back a little. In 2013 my husband and I bought our first home, which is the home we still live in and would also like to die in. We have so many kids on our block, and neighbors who we actually really like, and we love the community and we were so broke when we bought our home that we bought the only home in the world we could afford and aren’t interested in placing risky eggs in the upgrade-to-something-better basket. What would be better anyway? Isn’t it all about the people?

I digress. So, the first summer in our home we were so excited to garden for the first time in our lives that we built side yard and front yard garden boxes and loaded them up with everything. You name it, we planted it.

We got some beans. We gathered like one tomato. The arugula bolted and the bunnies took the cucumbers. The bugs took the watermelon and our lack of watering took everything else.

But it was so fun! We live in Minneapolis where it’s practically sacrilege to not have your own tomato plant. After that first summer one of our neighbors told us she was done gardening. She didn’t like it, she was scrapping it. She just quit. Huh, I thought. You can do that?

The next year we gave it another go. By we I mean me. I Planted a bunch of stuff. Had another baby. Didn’t water anything. Didn’t harvest anything. Soil sucked. Also discovered that the spot next to our steps by our front door can’t keep anything alive. We tried four different plants over four different summers in that dead spot. On the fourth summer I was telling a neighbor what I was going to plant there and she said sympathetically, “Oh, you’re still trying?” like I was deranged for keeping at it.

That year the plant stayed. Survived. Thrived. It was a sumac, and now it’s so big that my problem is that it’s taking up too much space. YES! These are the gardening problems I’ve always wanted!

We kept on with dying gardens for a few more summers, and then finally I realized that I needed to shrink the garden size and focus. I needed to plant fewer things. In fact, it also suddenly occurred to me that I really enjoy a farmer’s market experience, too, and so I don’t actually need to grow all my own (dead) food.

So we downsized. And again, by we I mean me. I hacked up the garden boxes. Gave them away to some neighbors, Layered a few up to make them taller. Added dirt from the old ones to the new ones and mixed in some compost from our chicken coop (oh, forgot to tell you - we have seven chickens!).

Planted two tomato plants. Actually three. Did just one tiny little box of veggies, and one big one full of wildflowers. What a joy to plant wildflowers! Just think about it: Flowers that are wild. Mixed. They do what they want, unrestrained. Just free little flowers, away from the structure of tame flowers.

They’ve thrived. And over in another spot I had three tomato plants pop up that I didn’t even plant. My garden is so lively this year, in this space of reducing and minimizing and focusing and choosing and letting go that I even have volunteer tomatoes!

Every year I learn something new about gardening, and some lessons about how to live life, too. Here’s what I’ve collected so far:

1. Plant what you love. In your garden, in your life. Lean in to the things that fit into your world and your life and your yard.
2. Ask to see other people’s gardens. They love talking about it because they work really hard on it. Ask them for their expertise, their learned experiences. You can do this about their lives too. People know things, and they usually like to tell you about what they’ve gathered.
3. You can fail. It doesn’t really matter. So your tomatoes suck? Who cares! Your lilies were dry this year? What does it matter! NO ONE CARES. And if they do, they can keep it to themselves. It’s none of my business what other people think of my garden, and none of my business what they think of my life either.
4. Quit! You can quit gardening if you hate it! I know because like I said earlier, my neighbor quit. Also, if you don’t like putting your energy into a certain part of your life and you have the option to walk away from it, maybe quit that too.
5. The movie “The Biggest Little Farm” taught me through their traditional farming experience that it’s wise to take a step back to find solutions. I so so so highly recommend this movie.
6. Chickens like to eat their eggshells. It’s so weird, and I don’t think I can draw a life lesson from this one. Just a little thing for you to know.
7. Give yourself the grace of seasons upon seasons to build your knowledge. It’s just not really the kind of thing that can be rushed. It just takes time.
8. What’s funny looking at first might be gloriously abundant the next year around. Can you believe it? Something ugly might bloom into beauty? Ah, this my friends, is the greatest lesson of them all.

Warmly,

Allyssa