5. Just Leave Me Alone
Life Lessons of a Backyard Gardener
Teenagers are a strange species. They’re not kids anymore, but full brain development is still a decade off into the misty future. They’re suddenly in need of socializing, but turned off by the innocent gatherings from just a few years prior. Childhood friends are morphing into unrecognizable forms, with new interests and mannerisms that range from vexing to maddening, once-cherished relationships fading into an amorphous, eternal abyss. Visits from relatives that once summoned joy and anticipation now impose the crushing weight of angst and irritation. Questions, questions, the same old unanswerable questions… No, I haven’t picked a career path yet – I’m fourteen. Duh. Peace and contentment lost, seemingly never to be rediscovered. As parents, we watch in horror, but are resigned to the knowledge that everyone crosses this Rubicon. What is a parent to do? Sometimes the answer is to do what they ask: Just leave them alone.
People and plants need space -- space to be themselves, space to be comfortable, space to grow, space to learn, space to discover their calling, space to contribute, space to follow an arc of life. But humans are meddlers. We have deep, entrenched instincts to react rather than observe, or even disregard. We want to help. As parents, we want to make things better. It is painful to see our kids struggle. We want to believe that we have the superpower of casting peace and tranquility bubbles wherever conflict might arise. But we fail to apprehend the reality lurking below, to wit: even if such a superpower existed, we would be foolish to use it, except in the most extreme situations. Life is a team sport, but the players in all sports must be prepared to play. They must practice to develop the individual skills needed to grow, contribute and compete. Such practice cannot be outsourced; allowing a player to defer is no favor. It is a lonely and essential part of any game, including the one we call life. We need to develop as individuals so that we can contribute our best to whatever teams we join.
Gardeners are human, and humans are meddlers, so it is no surprise that gardeners crave constant involvement in the lives of their green offspring. An imperfect leaf, perhaps the victim of a wayward slug… some slight yellowing… a shriveled baby zucchini on a young plant… a malformed coneflower… a sad-looking zinnia seedling on an unusually cool morning in spring. With occasional exceptions, these are all forceful calls to inaction. They are normal. No intervention required. But the human / gardener instinct is to question, brood and agonize -- and then interfere. We naturally idealize life, its processes, the communities it requires, and the versatility needed to thrive. We paint utopian mental pictures of how things are supposed to unfold, and we expect reality to conform. Meanwhile, reality remains blissfully unaware of our expectations, tossing curveballs, screwballs and knuckleballs in the dirt. It laughs at strike zones, with a hint of disdain, all the while mumbling ”Go ahead, try and predict me!”
We then convert those unfortunate but harmless expectations into interference. We assume slug damage, and immediately deploy slug controls, neither knowing that the problem we seek to solve is the real problem, nor considering the chain of side effects that the merely potential solution to a likely non-problem might unleash. We see a yellowed leaf, conduct a brief internet search and quickly conclude that nutrients are missing. So it is off to the store to buy unbalanced fertilizer to restore… balance. And again, we tip a domino that need not be tipped, which almost certainly will detonate a chain reaction whose consequences we might not appreciate for weeks or months. Or, in the case of young humans, years. We routinely underestimate the cost of interference. We fail to recognize phases and temporary hiccups for the transient, natural and inevitable phenomena that can – even must – occur in a universe governed in part by the metaphorical wings of butterflies.
You might reasonably ask: Why should we embrace and ignore the flap of a butterfly wing, but be so concerned about our own interactions with dominoes? Do they both not brim with the nervous energy of unknown and unintended side effects? Yes, they do. But the garden offers answers to such difficult questions. Regardless of how complex biological systems got here, we can all agree that they are exquisitely tuned for what they do. A garden plant, such as a bush bean or a turnip or a sunflower, faces a tough road from seedling to adult, but it is designed to handle the journey. Heavy rains, high wind, a band of malicious, freeloading aphids – any of these things could, in principle, take down an ill-equipped living being. And that happens in extreme situations. But, far more often than not, a plant simply shrugs off the imposition and returns to its prime directive. Plants are born equipped to deal with thousands of potential stressors. Plants know all about the butterflies and their flapping wings. They shrug off a few aphids here, a slug there. They will sacrifice a leaf now and again for any number of reasons. The plant knows what it is doing. It is an expert in planthood.
When we interfere with highly tuned natural systems, we are saying “We think we know better, even though we don’t. But we want to help. And you should accept that help, because it makes us feel good.” But the victim …er, recipient, of our kindness and concern is not equipped for us. It can handle some raw wind and rain. But it isn’t designed for an onslaught of chemical salts disguised as plant food, or petrochemicals masquerading as fungicides. Those substances are dominoes, and the chain reactions that they launch veer onto rabbit trails that the plant has never seen, nor is equipped to navigate. The path might seem serene at first, but that can change quickly.
When I was a young teen, I inherited an African violet, which, in later years, I dubbed “Affy”. Affy was and is unremarkable, a dictionary entry for its genre, with dark green leaves and deep indigo flowers with yellow centers. Affy’s most remarkable feature is longevity, as it approaches its fiftieth (!) year under my personal stewardship (I have no idea how old it was when I inherited it). Over that half a century, it has lived an eventful life, sometimes bursting with clusters of flowers over sturdy, shiny foliage, and other times shrinking into a limp, sad mass, with dull, lifeless leaves drooping to the edges of its pot. It is difficult to know what causes the down times; it doesn’t seem to be seasonal or predictably cyclical in any way. It just happens. And when it does, I resist the urge to intervene too aggressively. Oh, sure, if a decade has passed without any new soil, it might be time. But if I don’t see some reasonable explanation, some plausible cause, I am far more inclined to do nothing. And just leave it alone. Affy has figured it out for fifty years, I think she has earned my trust. Some process, some cycle, some mode of life is in play that I can neither observe nor understand. It will pass, if I respect it and steer clear. African violets can be a bit extreme in their longing for the solitude of the status quo, but hints of their example emerge everywhere, if you step back, understand and respect what is around you. Sometimes the world doesn’t need your help.
Give things and people the space they need to grow.
Chapter 6 - (Coming Soon!)