Every artist knows there is a phase of their work when the result is not beautiful, when the canvas looks chaotic, and perhaps when the studio appears to be in disarray. When moving to a new home (or reorganizing), there is a phase when it seems everything is everywhere, all at once, when the chaos seems impossible. With experience, we know to keep going, that it will get better.
This week, a new mower came and cut the back pasture at church, and was cautioned before starting that we had some young trees planted in back, and to please not mow them down. Young trees often don’t look like trees, but like unruly shrubbery. These must have looked unpromising to the mower, because he cut down over fifty young trees that the scouts and I had planted in March of 2021, in the aftermath of our house being flooded. When I saw the damage, I wept angrily, not because the trees were so fantastic yet, but because I had high hopes for what they would become.
I’ve also been thinking about this messiness recently in our gardens. I have two beds where I simply scattered a large amount of perennial wildflower seed, two winters ago, when the soil was bare. This spring, they were growing tall, lush leaves, but honestly looked a bit of a mess — it was only from experience that I knew the plants weren’t weeds, and that eventually the tangle of green leaves showed promise.
A month ago, one bloomed: thick with daisies, their glorious yellow-centered white flowers bobbing under the weight of bees. And two weeks ago, just before we got back from vacation, the other bed bloomed, a vibrant swarm of yellow rudbeckia and evening primroses. The pollinators zip around, working them, all day long and into the night, as moths take their shift after the bees. I go outside simply to admire them, patting myself on the back for the beauty I’ve fostered. Interestingly, both beds, though they bloomed very differently, came from the same seed package, but given different conditions of water and sunlight, different plants in that mix thrived in the two different beds.
It’s a short season, for each flower in its own way. The evening primrose blooms each last for one night, from dusk til midday; the daisies and rudbeckia each at peak bloom for about two weeks. With some plants, like dusky-sky-blue balloonflowers, I can keep the bed looking tidier by deadheading, aborting wilted flowers before they set seed.
I’m honestly now sure how I’m going to deal with the rudbeckia, which after weeks of sun-and-flame color, will soon become an unruly mess of stems and stalks and brown, crispy seedheads. If I wanted to skip that phase and make things tidy, I could cut them all down, but then the plants won’t be as strong next year, and I won’t be able to collect seed to sow in other beds.
Most gardeners I know take lots of pictures because we know that the most beautiful, golden phase, as Robert Frost wrote, “only lasts an hour.” Before and after, each plant may look plain or unpromising — or even dead.
In human life, we, too, tend to have a peak in terms of photogenic beauty. Even if we don’t feel beautiful at 16, or 23, or 35, we see afterward, when we look at old photos, that at some point, the rose was indeed blooming. But mostly, we aren’t so forgiving of ourselves to see lovingly the unruly productivity of preparing to bloom, of preparing to set seed and grow roots. The ugliness of middle school, the chaos of most people’s careers in their 20s, the patient growth of wisdom that can help set seeds for the next generation (with our children, or with our work and livelihoods) — these phases aren’t always showy or colorful.
When we’re old, we lament our wrinkles, because love and kindness and teaching and servant leadership are like setting seeds — not beautiful like flowers — but beautiful in function and in the hope they represent, beautiful because of what they will become, if left to grow.
