The big picture
Revelling in the simple pleasures of gardening is a gift when we need to stay home, writes MICHAEL McCOY
Aren’t we lucky. What a time in history to have a bit of land and a few plants to nurture that nurture us in return. What a time to have a consuming passion that plays out within the boundaries of our own property, right outside our back door.
I never knew, when I took a mild interest in the cuttings my mother had in a glass on the kitchen windowsill, that I was about to be swept up in an unstoppable vortex of passion that would keep me, giddy with joy, on a steep learning curve for the rest of my life. And for all the international travel, TV and speaking engagements threaded along that arc, none gives me the satisfaction, or inner silence and stabilisation, that my home garden – designed, built, planted and tended by me – gives.
There’s nothing smug about this. It’s not that I’ve achieved incredible things in my garden and can bask in the glow of my command of this complex pursuit. It’s the fact that, whatever has been achieved, there’s so much more to be done, and that whatever I’ve learnt, there’s so much more to learn. Every step, from the very first, has been both richly rewarding and revealing of steps yet to come. Like so many other passions, it’s fuelled by a longing that needs rewards for its sustenance but doesn’t look like ever being satiated.
This dynamic is manifested in the last few leaves of my massive oak, hanging on for dear life. They must and will fall. The gargantuan framework on which they teeter has been manufactured, in minute increments, by the work of those leaves, each year for at least a century. Buds concealing new leaves are evident, though there’ll be six months of deep sleep before they emerge and make their contribution to this ancient structure. The current moment is celebrated in the context of this exquisitely slow process.
As was the planting of the bulbs over autumn. The action of planting dry, brown storage organs into dirt is far from a necessary evil with an eventual pay-off. There’s a reward in the now
– in the participation in a process that has soaked up sunshine from seasons past, and will reach fruition in flowering. This anticipatory pleasure can equal, or even exceed, the ultimate reward, but depends on it for its existence. It’s a real and separate joy, but can’t be cheated into reality.
It is this energy, this longing, this anticipation and participation that drives so much of our gardening. And right now, when ‘home’ means more than perhaps ever before, I’m overwhelmingly grateful for being consumed by this rich, simple, life-affirming pleasure.
Michael blogs at thegardenist.com.au