Here in Alabama, mid-winter brings as many balmy days as bleak ones, and some recent 60-degree temperatures had me back out in my garden, debating where to put my new
Purple Diamond Loropetalum and my snazzy new Yetta Hawthornes. As I wandered the yard and pondered plant placement in the gentle winter sunlight, I was reminded of lessons I’ve learned from my garden, and one lesson in particular that that has been useful to me as a storyteller: I can’t control results. I can tell a story and think I know what the story means to me, or what effect it has on me, but I can’t control where the story goes for my listeners, where the story will touch – or not touch – them.

In my early gardening days, I was a frantic new mother of my garden babies, running to the garden center and the extension service with every yellow-spotted leaf, every suspicious-looking bump or imperfect bloom, until finally Carl set me straight. Carl is my garden center guru. The first time I went to the Ruffner Road Garden Center, the first time I’d been to any garden center in 20 years, I was expecting to find it staffed by sensitive types, Earth Day advocates, environmentally friendly folks in Birkenstocks who love nature and all things organic. Instead, I found Carl. Carl is an ex-Marine with a pack of Camels rolled up in his T-shirt sleeve, and a tattoo that says Semper Fi. Early on, Carl said to me, “Lady, I don’t care what you spray on ‘em, if you’ve got roses in Alabama, you’ve got blackspot.” After my 895th question about some peculiarity of leaf or petal, Carl said, “Lady, you’ve just got to relax. Water ‘em, feed ‘em, give ‘em some sun if they need it, and then leave ‘em alone.”

My garden – and Carl – remind me that I can’t control results, especially when it involves living things.

One June Saturday morning, a couple of years after I moved in, I decided I’d cut down a wall of rambling roses. Though it sounds lovely and romantic – oh, rambling roses, how sweet – that fact was that about 6 ramblers had grown together into a nasty thicket, they hadn’t been pruned in years, they were leggy and dead under the top layer of green, the leaves were prone to powdery mildew all summer long, and the long, twisting, thorny canes were pulling down the wooden trellis trying to support them. It was an eyesore.

Armed with my long-handled loppers, my long-sleeved shirt, and my long-view of how much better things would look without this tangled, scratchy mass in the middle of the yard, I did battle with the vine. It fought back, poked me in the eye, tore through my shirt, scratched the skin of my arms. Halfway through the project, I discovered a small bird’s nest tucked into the thicket, but it was too late to stop the pruning process. There were no eggs or little birds in the nest, it was June, after all, and I figured all the baby birds had long ago earned their wings. So I continued to slash and whack, like the prince slashing and whacking his way through the briars guarding Sleeping Beauty’s castle. And, like the prince, in the end, I was cut and bleeding but victorious. The yard looked better, cleaner, and I had a satisfying pile of cut brush lying in the curb waiting to be hauled away.

The next morning, I came out onto the patio for breakfast. I sat there, sipping coffee, sorting through the Sunday paper, happy to have Saturday’s yard chores done, when I heard a sound, a cheep, cheep, cheep – a high, mournful, sound, and walked out into the garden to see a single brown bird, perched on the brick edging of the flower bed, looking at the trellis, staring straight at the spot where the nest would have been. Cheep, cheep, cheep. The bird didn’t move as I approached, it sat there resolute, intent, staring at the empty space. Cheep, cheep. There were no eggs in the nest, no baby birds. Why was the bird crying, what did it want? Cheep, cheep. It was a grown bird, it surely didn’t live in that tiny nest, yet there it was, staring right at the spot where the nest would have been. A small brown bird, bereft, forlorn.

And I learned again from my garden that I can’t control results. There are unintended consequences to things we do, to actions we take, and our actions – or stories – can affect others in ways we’d never imagine. Sometimes in good ways, sometimes in unfortunate ways, but in ways that we can’t predict or control. And the lesson for me was not to stop doing things, not to stop making choices, but to remember that I live in a large, shared garden, and am not the only creature that calls it home.