Day Lilies…

I’ve been spending a lot of time (well, relatively speaking) in my garden the last couple of weeks. June is good for that- everything looks and feels fresh, and the colors are at their most vibrant. The rabbits and deer haven’t yet decimated my hopes (this year I planted enough for us to share, I hope). Not unlike a newly framed house before the sheathing goes up, anything seems possible. I spent a lot of time at the local nurseries, browsing, wandering…and cautiously, frugally choosing a few new perennials to flesh out my little beds. It’s a haphazard looking garden, no order to it- herbs, flowers and food commingle, looking for just the right light. Here I find myself being purely responsive, shifting bits and pieces from one spot to another, playing shapes and colors off of each other, no particular pattern or order- not unlike the way I paint. Here I can let go of the planning, the systems, the structure and organization that is so necessary in my design work. Here I can just watch stuff grow.

But the designer is never far from the surface, no matter how much I’d like to be loose. So I keep moving things and I’m damned if I can figure it out. Plants are not so cooperative; they have a mind of their own. For all my meddling, I am constantly- and happily- surprised; what I thought would be spectacular never quite gets there and something else I entirely missed is amazing.

It’s very humbling digging in the dirt. There are successes for certain, but mostly things seem to grow, take root and bloom at their own pace and in their own time- not unlike my children. And perhaps that’s the best of life, and the lesson for me is to be less of a designer and just be a facilitator, sit back and smell the roses for real.

Right now I have this spectacular day lily- coral and pink; deeply, extravagantly beautiful, with a dozen or so buds to make anticipation of its continuing bloom for the next few weeks enough to draw me, coffee mug in hand, to my yard every morning. It’s a lovely, transient thing; backed by an abounding bloom of lavender, its transience perhaps makes it all the more poignant, a little sad and special- a gift to cherish in the moment. Gardens are like that.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my own approach to design, and through that frame to the bigger picture of life and love at large. The challenges of these past two years have changed me like no others in my life, and I feel I am coming full circle- as hopefully we all are- through the experience of planting seedlings in shallow soil; some take, some don’t, some are thorny, some add color. I’ve done a fair amount of weeding as well, but find that many of the weeds are actually flowers themselves. Trite? Maybe. But axioms are rooted in truth, are they not?

My conclusion? I get to play, but the garden isn’t really mine- it has a life all its own. But for sure in the digging, I've found my own roots...