Inna Godda da Vida

Most days this is where I hang out. In a garden, the life. It's where I choose to sit and drink coffee in the morning, weather permitting, and have a bite of breakfast. For a few minutes it's a restful place to take in the visual and auditory state of the garden while the wrens go about their rambunctious business, the salvia calmly withstand the heat, and the other fauna and flora do what they do.

When I come home at night, this is where I choose to sit and have a drink and perhaps a bite of supper if there's enough light, winding down from a day of risk management. Throw in a workout here and there, and that's pretty much what I do on a normal suburban day.

On the weekend, of course, I have the distinct pleasure of doing the actual gardening, for as we know, there is no garden without the actual work of gardening, notwithstanding the ads on TV that tell people they can go to a big-box store and buy one. And that's the deal. You have to do the weeding and watering, the digging and planting, the thinning and transplanting, the pruning and disposing of debris and detritus, if you want to live in a garden.

But all that is the fun part. Once you get into it, grabbing a spade or a trowel and bending over weed after weed is a satisfying chore - a chore nonetheless, but take a look after an hour or so, and see the difference! Then, if you're smart, you'll take a break, sit in the shade, and enjoy a nice cool beverage, which you have earned and your body needs. Then, if there's time, you move on to the next mundane, monotonous, meditative chore and weed another bed, move a clump of groundcover to fill in a bare spot, or give the tomatoes a drink of water.

All of this is obvious, given the nature of gardening: that gardens are not naturally occurring, like forests, or floodplains, or prairies, or deserts. They have to be created and maintained by gardeners. And the hypothetical imperative, if you're a gardener is to take care of it, nurture it, give it love, and respond to its needs.

In return, the gardener get to see the effect of his or her labor, either immediate as in the case of a nice, weed-free bed, or deferred as in the case of a newly planted tree, sprigs of groundcover, or bean seeds. But above all, the gardener has the distinct privilege of inhabiting a garden.