New batch of zucchini plants.
I recently texted a friend: Gardening is so emotional.
She replied: Yes it is. And so microcosmic.
Gardening has become so pervasive in my life. I am enjoying the way it requires me to show up, pay close attention to something, and care for it in simple, small ways.
And “microcosmic” is such a great word. I looked it up. “A small place, or situation that has the same characteristics of something larger. A little world.” The wealth of ways gardening principles relate to the world at large blows my mind.
One of the many things it has me thinking about is this: the level of discomfort I experience with the power I have in this “little world” - my 20 bucket backyard universe.
One of the first things I planted was cucumbers. As they matured, I started noticing squash bugs but never really did anything about them. I also planted tomatoes. While the cucumbers grew fast, my tomatoes absolutely took 3 months to start producing fruit. Now that the fruit is coming, I’m finding leaf-footed bugs all over my tomato crop.
I tried to leave these angry-looking warriors alone, but I can see how they’re damaging my crop. I went to YouTube to see how to eradicate, or at least, manage this problem.
The answer involves knocking them into a bucket of soapy water. This is particularly effective early in the morning.
So this morning, I did. I put a few drops of dish soap in a cup of water and used the stream from a spray bottle to knock them in. The soap breaks the surface tension of the water, making it harder for them to escape, and they effectively drown. So there I am — in my garden, looking to drown some bugs.
“YES, THEY DESERVED TO DIE — AND I HOPE THEY BURN IN HELL!”
If you hate bugs, that might seem like whatever, but drowning is probably my worst, or second worst, fear of ways to die. I imagine it to be quite painful. I also believe that outside belongs to the bugs, and whatever is growing outside is fair game as food. So who am I to provide food in these creatures’ home, and then come to drown them when they partake?
While looking for nature’s solution to the problems it gives me, I also looked up the natural predators that target the pests in question. “Good” things I have seen in my garden are bees (pollinators), tiny frogs, and spiders. I recently looked up, “How do I attract spiders into my garden?” And when I asked this question, I realized in the back of my mind, I am literally playing God in this universe. Deciding what life forms are welcome, which ones must die, and which ones I’ve developed a fondness for because I appreciate their work.
There are other God-like decisions I have to make (which also have lessons inside them), such as pruning (selectively removing unwanted parts of a plant due to being damaged, diseased, non-productive, or structurally unsound), overseeding (planting too many seeds because you don’t know what will germinate), and then thinning (selectively removing weaker or smaller plants, to improve the growth of stronger, larger plants). There are so many decisions about where life can exist, and how I will care for it, while I’m also making decisions about what things will no longer live, or are no longer welcome in my little world, because they don’t serve my purpose.
It makes me uncomfortable. When I have three small zucchini plants, and I have to pull one because it’s small and I don’t have enough containers to sustain all of the zucchini that germinated, I feel like some horrific despot, ripping the underdog from its environment. As an aside, I have given away plants – and I like that option, but it’s not always the most practical thing.
In deep diving into these feelings, I realize that when I decided to plant a garden, I created an ecosystem—and put myself in the uncomfortable position of managing it. It’s not that I’m the God of a Little World. I don’t have absolute control. My authority consists mainly of choosing what I will encourage or discourage, remove or protect, and where I will repeatedly direct my attention to help my little world thrive.
And that is a weird (oops – that useless word) unsettling experience of power. But it’s also a powerful life lesson. The microcosm of gardening is helping me appreciate both the possibility and responsibility of curating my life with ruthless intentionality: being deliberate about what I am planting, what I fertilize and give space, what I allow to reproduce, what I’m willing to prune, and what I’m no longer willing to feed. I don’t have control over everything. But I have the power to be intentional about everything.