The Hole Potential
Musing on empty holes in the ground
This morning, with the help of a young friend I occasionally pay to help me with the garden chores I can’t manage alone, the garden became Nandina-free. I’ve been looking forward to this for almost four years now, since we bought the house. Now, I have three big holes in the ground, where the last three rootballs came out.
So much potential. I have a dwarf quince waiting to go in ground, and a Yaupon Holly with a really interesting shape to it. The daffodils which have been suppressed in the shade will finally get a change to really strut their stuff. I’ll underplant the quince and holly with more flowers, too, and possibly a berry bush or three. Maybe not this year.
That’s the thing about a garden. It’s a whole potential, just waiting to be found out.
Just like the rest of life, it’s a mess for a while. Digging up the bad, and waiting for the good to slowly fill into it’s full beauty, well, you can’t rush that. I hurt myself last week, trying to do this alone. Even today I’m feeling the pain of having pushed my limits. Still worth it. It’s not easy to effect change.
It takes some imagination to see past the thick, suffocating shrubbery into the garden which could be. I took a moment to think about my little leaning holly, with it’s hyacinths and daffodils, in a year from now, and sketched that for my daily art. Sometimes we get lost in the weeds of life, and need to get space and perspective on what our potential is, what beauty we can offer to the world. Sure, we all have bad habits to root out. They might have seemed like a good thing when we planted them, like the Nandina did to a gardener of another era, but as we grew they did too, only faster and thicker and we were like the daffodils, barely getting enough sun to survive, unable to bloom in the shade of our poor choices. Time to take shovels and an axe to the roots, and it might hurt a little. It may be a mess for time until healing and regrowth of the good routines and habits happens.
Still worth it.
You have a hole potential in you, too.
Amen.