When the World Is Falling Apart, Plant Something

Morning Glory from my own garden

A meaningful life needs more than resistance to what is wrong. It also needs an affirmative vision of what is good, beautiful, and worth preserving.

Orwell's Roses by Rebecca Solnit explores an interesting contrast between George Orwell's political side and his love of gardening. I finished the book today and wanted to share some of the thoughts it has left me with.

I read 1984 last year and, by the end, was both shocked and numbed by how closely it mirrors the attacks on language I see unfolding in the US today, along with so many other unsettling parallels. However, while he was confronting some of the darkest aspects of human nature, he was also making room in his life for the simple, tangible work of growing things. And not only things that nourished physically, like fruit trees, but also roses. And a flower's beauty nourishes something entirely different. 

Maybe that's part of what drew me to this book. Over the past two years, I've been gardening. When the world feels overwhelming, there has been something grounding for me to focus on tending to living things and creating a little beauty in the midst of it all. 

In the book, a story of Helen Todd and "Bread and Roses" strummed my heart. The idea is that people deserve more than just the bare necessities of survival. In 1910, Todd, an American factory inspector and women's suffrage activist, was campaigning for women's right to vote. She later recalled a conversation with a young woman named Maggie, whose family had hosted her during the campaign. When asked what she remembered most from the speeches, Maggie said it was the idea that women voting could help ensure that, "everybody would have bread...and flowers too." The phrase is said to have evolved into "Bread for all, and Roses too" and may have inspired James Oppenheim's 1911 poem Bread and Roses.

I've been reflecting on a phrase of my own: "Bread for your table, and flowers too." It brings to mind Jesus' words about the lilies of the field. He understood that we worry about the necessities of life, but he also directed our attention to the natural world, reminding us that there is more to living than the struggle to provide for and protect ourselves. Bread sustains us, and I love bread - ha, but beauty, nature, and maybe even the simple act of tending a garden nourish us in other ways. 

Maybe my garden isn't a way of turning away from the world's troubles or pretending they aren't there. It's a way of making room for something beautiful in the midst of them. We should acknowledge what is broken but not forget to nurture what is beautiful. Orwell did. 

Dear Reader, 

May you have bread for your table, and flowers too. 

Other Memorable Ideas from Orwell's Roses:

• Beauty is not a distraction from serious work. It can be part of what makes that work worth doing.

• A garden can be an act of hope. Planting something is a way of investing in a future.

• Political awareness and an appreciation of beauty can coexist. Caring about injustice does not require turning away from life's pleasures.

• The natural world has a value beyond its usefulness to human beings. Not everything needs to justify its existence through productivity.

• The ordinary pleasures of life deserve our attention. Flowers, gardens, and small moments of delight are not trivial simply because they are ordinary.

• Even people who confront the world's darkest realities need sources of joy. Being joyful does not mean someone has retreated from reality.

• Small acts of care can have significance beyond their immediate results. Tending a garden matters even when it changes nothing on a grand external scale.

• Hope is not always grand or dramatic. Sometimes it takes the form of tending something fragile and allowing it to grow.

Our Scarecrow, Harvest Hank

It became obvious I needed a scarecrow for the garden. A limb fell that happened to make the perfect shoulders and arms so I ran to Goodwill, picked up some clothes, and happened to find a pumpkin candle holder that worked perfectly for a head. Introducing Harvest Hank!

I spray starched his clothes, hot glued a hat to the pumpkin, and fastened him to one of my garden's entry poles. He's lasted through rain and wind gusts. Oh yay! And he's been perfect for the spooky season. Heck, sometimes even when I'm working the garden I'll forget he's there, turn around, and startle myself. Lol.

The Day Those Buffalo Ghosted Me: The Wander Society

This weekend I drove to another town so I could wander around an antique store. I was reading The Wander Society by Keri Smith when I decided that morning to not just read about wandering but actually wander.  

Where did I end up?

In someone's pasture reading the very book that had sent me wandering in the first place. Nothing happened as I planned. Which, I suppose, was the point. Granted, my adventure was mostly by car and the book focuses a lot on walking, but I know that wandering is a state of mind that requires little. We need a willingness to go out the door and have the next direction be the one that simply looks the most interesting. Or to pause when something catches your eye. Or to sit for a while without needing to accomplish anything.

On the way, feeling spontaneous, I stopped to see where the buffalo roam. But those buffalo ghosted me. And that was perfectly fine.

I got out of my car and walked, listening to the crunch of little pebbles beneath my sneakers. I wandered beneath a small group of oak trees gathered in a loose circle, like friends around a campfire, and listened to the wind moving through the branches with that deep, rustling sound that seems to belong entirely to autumn. I decided, right there, that the sound of wind through oak trees is currently my favorite tree sound.

As I continued walking, I lightly touched the hip-high prairie grass, with its soft, fluffy heads perched on long, slender stems. Their colors shifted as I moved from the pale tan of a manila folder to a deep, dusky burgundy. I don't know exactly what kind these were, and somehow, I liked not knowing. Simply noticing was enough.

After walking a bit, I turned back around to see the scene from a different angle. Love that! Then I found a perfectly flat rock and sat down.

And listened. And pondered. 

Birds. Wind. The country breathing around me. Every now and then, a car passed by and briefly interrupted the quiet before disappearing down the road.

Nothing remarkable happened.

Which was, perhaps, the remarkable part. The part that really calmed my nervous system. 

Eventually, I got back in the car and continued toward my original destination. The Antique Store's door sign said, "Closed for Good." Hmmm. I opened the map and looked for somewhere else to wander.

That is when I found a little coffee shop close to a lake.

The coffee shop was NOT roadside. I drove down a gravel road, unsure, as I continued onto someone's private property, past a barndominium to the lower part of the land where another small barn rested under the trees. There were tables outside, but no flags announcing OPEN. I called and they welcomed me in, so I walked down their gravel path, again noticing the sound crunching under my sneakers. I ordered a sweet coffee, and settled down at their outside seating with my copy of The Wander Society. I read a few pages, doodled in the margins, watched low clouds roll southward across the sky above me, and ate my honey badger panini with apple chips.

And somewhere between these gentle activities and some soft hellos to others walking by, I realized I enjoy wandering. Maybe that's what it gives us: a chance to be available to the things we are usually too busy to notice. 

The Wander Society's patron saint, Walt Whitman, once wrote:

"Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,

Healthy, free, the world before me,

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose"

Yes, uncle Walt, yes. 

The open road makes no promises, but to the curious, it gives treasures. And I like that.