Curiosity: Approaching the Garden with a Beginner’s Mindset
“Your mind is the garden, your thoughts are the seeds, the harvest can either be flowers or weeds.” -William Wordsworth
I’m not a gardener.
But something hits me at the hardware store: leaves fluttering in the light breeze, a green wall of baby strawberry plants just beginning to flower. At eye-level, a diminutive blossom peeking out from beneath three serrated leaflets, white and five-petaled, calls my attention.
It seems to say to me, “take me with you.” I put it in my cart.
My new strawberry plant enjoys the ride around the hardware store in my shopping cart. After purchasing it and loading up my car, it rides shotgun, its little plastic pot slotting perfectly into my car’s cup holder.
My partner, waiting in the car, looks down at our new plant companion and back at me. “I just really love strawberries,” I say. “I’m going to plant this out back, and maybe we’ll have some this summer.”
“Okay, that sounds nice,” he answers, and returns to his magazine.
When we get home, I place the plant on the stone wall in the garden, a garden for which my grandmother has meticulously cared for nearly half a century. In her old age, it has become more difficult.
The garden is on an embankment held by the stone wall. The iris blooms are just beginning to unfurl, and violets mark the garden’s perimeter. The dogwood tree on the embankment is still in flower, attracting a dozen buzzing bees.
On the wall, under the dogwood’s shade, I’ve set a large flower pot containing cohabitating apothecary rose and yarrow (they really seem to like each other). I set my new strawberry plant here, still in its pot, on the wall next to the rose and yarrow. “Maybe you can be friends,” I say, and make my way back inside.
I’m not a gardener.
But a few days after bringing my strawberry plant home, I feel the itch to get it planted in the ground.
When I was a kid, the area at the corner of the stone wall was a goldfish pond. Then, it was filled in with dirt and used as another garden bed. It is now overgrown with weeds: dead nettle, bittercress, dandelion, and wood sorrel.
Now past their prime, I had already collected from each of these “weeds” to prepare fresh plant tinctures. I thank each of them for the medicine they’ve offered this season, and for their abundance that allowed me to harvest from them sustainably.
I pull up weeds until the ground is nearly bare. It’s a dirty job, but clearing the way for the new growth is necessary. It’s half-shaded under the dogwood tree, perfect for a few herbs and vegetables.
I dig deep in the middle of my plot, a spot closer to the dogwood but in direct sun part of the day. It’s difficult to get my hand trowel through the dense clay soil, but I manage to break it up. I pull the plant out of its pot, loosen its roots from its potting soil, and place it gently in the hole I’ve just dug.
I pat the soil around the strawberry plant with my bare hands, tucking my little green friend into its new flower bed. I watch it intently for a few minutes for some sign showing whether it likes its new home. Its tiny flower still keeps shy underneath its leaves, but occasionally peaks out when the breeze comes through. I give it some water, and I head back inside.
I’m not a gardener.
But I’m outside again, checking on the strawberry plant. In only a few weeks, many of its flowers have developed into tiny green strawberries. A few berries have ripened to beautiful strawberry red, but each ripe fruit has either met the wrong end of a hungry bug or shriveled up on its stalk.
Each failed berry hits my heart as a personal mistake. Had I put the poor plant in the wrong spot, frying it alive in the sun? Should it have gone in a planter or been covered with mesh to protect my baby berries??
I come out every day to prune yellowed leaves, deliver a bit of water, and cull sproutlets that have popped up overnight, yet still I’ve got no good strawberries to taste.
I get curious. Brushing its upper leaves aside reveals new growth underneath, and the plant’s popping open new flowers. Maybe it’s okay here. Maybe it just needs some time. The first few fruits were failures, but that doesn’t mean they all will be.
I’m worried for my little strawberry. It’s supposed to be hot and dry here while we’re on our weekend trip. A little drizzle from the hose saturates the soil. The sunlight glimmers off droplets held on the strawberry’s leaves. I go inside.
I’m not a gardener.
It’s been one long, rainy week since our trip, so all my glimpses of my little plant have been from the window. It’s starting to grow a little taller than I thought strawberries could get. It seems to love all the rain it’s been getting.
The rain comes to a light drizzle, so I decide to visit. Another shriveled up berry here. Another chewed-through berry there.
Underneath its leaves I catch a spot of red in the dark, dampened soil. I pick it up to discover something that brings joy to my heart: a perfectly formed strawberry, covered in just a bit of dirt. I pinch the little berry off its stalk. “Thank you, strawberry!”
I take the ripened berry inside and wash it off in the sink. Carefully, I slice it in half. I share it with my partner, and we both take a bite.
There’s not much to say. It’s a perfectly juicy, sour-sweet, strawberry. No more, and no less. Perfect.
Maybe in all of that tending to this little plant, I became a beginner.
Maybe I can be okay with saying this instead:
I am a gardener, but I will always have much to learn.
