This is another one of my garden metaphors.

Last summer, a volunteer sunflower showed up in the garden. As I do with all feral plants, I left it alone, but made sure it could grow and thrive. It did.

When it finished growing, I collected its seeds, and spread some of them around the yard. Some of them grew into flowers, and I collected some of their seeds. I kept them in a safe place, until the ground was ready to receive them earlier this season.

I planted those seeds into my actual garden, and I have tended them with the rest of my plants. Sunflowers, I have noticed, don’t really want or need much intervention, so mostly I was making sure no pests were damaging them, and I did remove a couple of stalks that were struggling. What is left have grown into this beautiful sunflower patch that attracts so many bees and other pollinators that are beneficial to our entire garden, as well as our local ecosystem in general.

I get to look at these flowers every day, and absolutely love everything they bring to my garden and to our local ecosystem, and when they are done, hundreds upon hundreds of seeds will emerge, because I kept an eye on a single seed about 25 moons ago, and mostly left it alone; I simply cared for and gently supported and protected it, until it was strong enough to bloom.

I wrote this on Tumblr when someone asked me if I had any hobbies. In the chain of reblogs, I came across this beautiful parable, from which I took this post’s title.

I have a garden that I love to work in every day. It’s one of my very few hobbies that are mostly private, that I keep for myself. I freely and enthusiastically share my love for classic arcade gaming, Tabletop and RPG games, and all my super nerd shit, so I like that I have this one thing that’s just for me, no expectations, no risk of getting dragged into The Discourse. It’s just for me and I love it.

During the lockdowns, I learned the difference between having a garden, and tending a garden. It turns out that I just love to tend my garden. I love to walk in it, smell all the smells, prune it and tie it up where it needs it, keep the soil healthy, and leave it alone when I’ve done enough. I love to listen to the birds, watch the bees and the butterflies, talk to the corvids, feed them the occasional grub or unwelcome insect. Watering is so lovely, carrying the can around and giving everything as close to just what it needs as I can. My coffee tastes better out there, too. It’s science.

In a lot of ways, I use my gardening time as a metaphor. One that was particularly meaningful to me lately came when I was pruning this feral tomato that showed up in one of my beds late last year. As a general rule, when I get any volunteers, I leave them alone, except to keep them away from things I’ve planted myself, as long as they aren’t invasive. I have more wildflowers around the yard than I can keep track of because of this policy, and I get a tomato or potato every other season or so in their respective beds. But in this case, this plant was growing so fast and getting so out of control, I had to rein it in a bit, with some pruning and gentle redirection of the parts which were tied to the trellis. If you can imagine Sideshow Bob’s hair as a tomato plant, you can sort of get the idea.

While I was tending it, I started thinking about the individual stalks as parts of my life experience: here’s one that doesn’t have anything growing on it, but if I follow it all the way to this point, I can see that it’s providing support and nutrients to this huge, thriving, massively flowering hunk of the plant over here. It turns out that that part may look like it isn’t doing anything, but without it, this other part that’s gorgeous wouldn’t exist.

I could have just looked at it and seen a stalk that wasn’t doing anything. I could have easily pruned it right then and there, because it was ugly, and only afterwards would I have discovered this lush, thriving, beautiful part of the plant that can’t exist without this other part. I was so grateful that I took the time to look at the whole thing, to see that bare stem in context, to appreciate it.

I don’t know if this particular metaphor lands on you, but it landed real hard on me. It inspired a wonderful moment of reflection and gratitude, and I also got excited for the … I mean, it’s at least a dozen, but maybe more … little cherry tomatoes I’m going to get when they finish ripening on this little bit of the vine. This plant is threatening to deliver pounds of fruit this season, and I just hope I can get there before the squirrels do.

Another thing about tending my garden is that it is, by design and necessity, slow. It rewards patience. It is entirely about the journey, even if the destination is pretty great on its own. I have recently noticed that, as long as I can remember, I have felt like I can’t slow down, like I can’t take time for myself, that I should always be working or trying to work. I’ve been working on healing as much of my CPTSD as I can, and part of that includes doing my best to give myself permission to slow down, to take entire days or even weeks off, because I was put to work when I was seven, and I have earned it. It’s such a struggle for me to give myself that grace.

And that’s where my garden is a metaphor again: it may not be full of blooming flowers or tons of vegetables right now, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t growing. Maybe it needs to be watered and fed today, and tomorrow, I can just walk through it, listen to the birds, watch the bees, notice new buds and leaves, choose to be grateful for the entire experience.

Your garden can be a metaphor, too, if you want.

Or not. I’m not the boss of you.