A Neglected Garden

Honestly taking care of your garden is hard work. Understanding the right time to plant your seeds, when to and how thorough to water your growing buds, prepping the soil with fertilizer, avoiding pesticides and protecting your bearing fruits and vegetables with wire mesh and constant vigilance. These crucial steps separate gardeners from shoppers.

I did no such thing for almost four years.

I’ve reflected on how it came to pass that my garden would overflow, choked by weeds and covered in slugs, growing chaotically out of the soil and spreading it’s roots deep underground where neither produce or wordplay could reach. In the end I had to make the assessment of my own strengths, and conclude the following; I suffered a brutal combination of general apathy hidden as laziness with a desire to grow but with no plan to nurture that growth. Of course I couldn’t focus on a simply task, I had to buy countless seeds and equipment for the job, only to spread my soil too thin. My seeds remained buds, and only with unchecked growth would any of them yield their bounty.

Yet the bounty I received was not of the humble potato, or the succulent strawberry. It was also not the complex conundrum of the tomato, and certainly not the hardy bedrock of nutrients found from the zucchini. Instead, I received a bounty of baby cut carrots. I was shocked that I somehow grew a manufactured, factory churned crop to consume, but alas that is what I did. I didn’t despair entirely, however. Beneath the carrots lay the groundwork for spring onion, the Leatherman of cooking potential which to this day inspires my love for Asian cuisine, and my continued nurturing of that particular set of skills. By some miracle or sorcery I also had grown a durian, my wonderous memento to my continued exploration of fictional reality. Yet my words continued to lay dormant, unwanted.

I must make a confession; This is the first time I have written for fun in a long time. Even now I can feel my shaking fingers as they try to remember the keyboard, my brain churning through my education to find a better way of expressing perspective without using so much of the dreaded I. Needless to say, a wordcount reveals that task still eludes me.

This, however, feels different. Do I still worry that I will once again leave my garden untended? Of course, for most of the fertilizer remains crushed dreams and paths not traveled. But, perhaps my fertilizer will change. I can add my spring onions in of course. I can add my durian, a bizarre fruit only possessed from my adventures into distant lands and mythic realities. Most importantly, as I clip away at the shooting strands of the weeds attempting to escape my garden, and water it once again, the soil receives one last gift. Finally, the small ray of sun is starting to shine only for my written crop, focused intently on it’s growth and care. Within this posts soil is the first seed, which is slowly rising the seed out of the dark underground and towards the rays. May it continue its journey.