Gardner's Journal: Making Peace with Unfinished

It's driving me crazy. It's just lying there, open, vacant, ready.

I've removed all the weeds that I can see, but millions are still in there just waiting for the right mixture of sun and water. After making my crips outline, I then bury the newly thatched dirt under black coverings, where it will sleep until Fall.

I can see in my mind the garden that will go there. I see the water feature that will grace the wall and I see the gravel and the container plants. This garden will have a mediterranean or old world feel, which will be perfect for the location: South side of a brick home.

But for now, the plans for this garden will lay under wraps, shrouded in darkness, like black tombs awaiting some resurrection.

I find myself thinking, "maybe it wouldn't hurt...just an evergreen, or two.." But I know I am kidding myself. I wouldn't stop at one, just like those potato commericals from years ago.

No, for now I must sit and wait and ponder, drawing out the designs on my pad and retracing them in my head. Gardening isn't for sissies and it sure isn't for impatient sissies. I stand at the corner of the garden, thinking, imagining. Do I strip off the veil, go to work, make this idea of mine alive?

It's tough stuff, this waiting. Like a nothingness that hangs over you, fooling you into thinking that nothing really worth doing is going on. Yet it is in this waiting that all things of value come into being. In the business world, time and patience are virtues, too. Mortages mature, bonds come to be due, loans reach their end. What started out as a small thing become bigger, larger, more full. "In due course.." legal ease reads.

But I won't lie..I don't like this waiting stuff. I'm impatient to see the results of my ideas, my designs. I want to check it off my list, show it off to my friends, say "i'm done" and move on.

But that, there, is the thing. Moving on doesn't mean finished. Moving on means letting time take its course. It's nurturing, healing, wonderful course.

And so I wait, swinging in my swing, impatient to start. What I am coming to understand, waiting is starting.