Springtime! Bees, ants, gnats, and a few butterflies have appeared. In the veg garden, the greens are thriving. I’ve sown the ornamental corn, noted the appearance of volunteer sunflowers, amaranth, and chamomile, and moved or weeded out those seedlings coming up where I don’t wish them to be–like in the middle of my soon-to-be tomato patch. The zinnia seeds have germinated in their little square, along with lettuce and spinach in their designated rows. The swallows returned today, right on schedule. Late April, and the garden looks pristine and tidy, even relatively weed-free for now: sectioned into rows, with a couple of raised beds and some stakes ready for climbers like cucumbers and pole beans. All prepped for the mid-spring explosion. The very small part of myself that likes things neatly in place promises to keep the garden less messy this year while knowing that won’t happen. The wiser self cautions that too many rigorous expectations take some of the joy out of the work.

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Frankly, it’s all too easy to find metaphors for life in the garden. Nurturing seeds with a sense of hope, even expectation, sure. Endeavoring to control outcomes though one cannot control the weather? Yep, that too. Culling, thinning, weeding in an effort to produce abundance, clarity, or beauty? Yes; and waiting and working under hot sun or in the pouring rain and being surprised by hail or hurricane or drought. (You can pop any of those words into the “search” bar on this blog page and find times I have written about said weather events.) In the thousands of poems I’ve drafted during the past 45 years, garden topics and metaphors abound. Lately, though, I’ve been dwelling on how change–inevitable in the garden–presents problems to solve but also lovely surprises. And yeah, there’s metaphor in that as well. Though people tend to avoid change, change brings a wealth of education in its wake.

It’s true that education is often humbling. We work our butts off only to discover we’ve been doing things wrong, or ineffectively, all along. That’s one of the things I learned when I began trying to grow things in earnest, and it is also true of my experience writing poems. You have to be willing to make mistakes and accept that you made them if you are going to improve; it doesn’t mean you have to solve each difficulty in a prescribed way. You can invent! As long as you know that invention sometimes fails, you can learn from it. Create a nonce form for a poem, for example. Or an improvised trellis for a squash vine that got a lot larger than you’d planned.

Every year in late winter, I devise a garden plan and order seeds. Every year in early spring, I revise the plan in some way. Every year in mid- to late-spring, the garden looks very different from those designs…it helps to have a flexible nature, since nature hates rigidity and thrives in its own way. Often unexpected. Sometimes frustrating. Sometimes quite a charming surprise to which I’m more than happy to adapt–I welcome the variation! It’s a process that reminds me of writing. No wonder my gardening and my poems are so connected: the processes are so similar.