Wisdom from Gardeners

By Yetta Jager, Green Sanctuary Committee

My mother was a gardener, and some of her advice about gardening applies to life in general. She taught me not to waste time weeding. Instead, she advised me to focus on planting desirable plants. If you only weed, you are just exposing bare soil to grow whatever random seeds might land there. In life, maybe we should also focus less on criticizing behaviors that we don’t approve of and more on nurturing and rewarding behaviors that we want to encourage, in ourselves and others. This reminds me of the ‘Two Wolves’ story from the Cherokee oral tradition depicts a battle within oneself between a "good wolf" representing kindness, love, and courage, and a "bad wolf" embodying negativity like anger, greed, and fear. The story's core message is that the wolf you choose to "feed" – the wolf you allow to dominate your thoughts – will be the one that shapes your life and personality.

I reached out to a few people in our congregation who tend gardens for life lessons learned from gardening, …and I asked google AI. Rev. Carol says, ‘My main takeaway from tending food crops: The earth is in charge, not us humans. No matter how many strategies we come up with to work around nature, it will ultimately win.’

Jerry Thornton: I have learned that gardens are hard work, like raising children! You have to do a lot of planning and preparation, but there is no guarantee of the outcome, and you often have to start over on some elements when things don't work out so well. I’ve learned that when you grow a garden, you will feed many creatures other than yourself whether you want to or not! Gardens are magnets for various insects, rabbits, chipmunks, birds, raccoons, skunks, squirrels, deer, groundhogs, 'possums and even box turtles. Grackles and other birds love to eat bean sprouts, as do chipmunks and squirrels. The deer love my bean and sweet potato plants! You can try to reduce animal depredation, but you can never fully stop them, so learn to plant enough to feed the natives and your family! Be generous to local animals as well as with humans.

Dave Goforth: I enjoy landscaping/gardening as much for the journey as the final product. Taking care of infrastructure, paths, compost, soil, maintenance, fertilizing, tools, etc. all take time/money, but I find great joy in doing it. I suspect my tomatoes end up costing me about $8, each! I've been a gardener my whole life. As a kid, I did not realize it, but I learned a lot from my parents, aunts and uncles. I will say that in spite of a lifetime accumulation of knowledge, I don't know everything. I find the gardeners on YouTube to be most enlightening. A couple of my favorites are The Gardening Channel With James Prigioni and The Millennial Gardener. Whereas my gardening is based on my personal experience, many of the You Tubers back up their gardening with stats. In life and gardening, I frequently say, "Never go to bed with a question on your mind" ... "Google it and find the answer".

So, I did, and I was impressed by the advice from Google AI: Planting a garden is a symbol of hope and faith in the future, as the act of planting is a commitment to tending to something that will grow and thrive. Gardening requires constant observation and adjustment, teaching patience and the importance of learning from setbacks. Successful gardeners appreciate the journey of growing, not just the final harvest, finding satisfaction in the process of tending and nurturing plants.