Gardening changes our attitude toward what makes us human

Plants and gardens are so important in our world partly because of they communicate a sense of life and growth.

Whatever comes, plants’ struggles to survive are linked emotionally and even spiritually to our own.

As I write, on a neighboring end table stands a dried bouquet of roses that a thoughtful friend of my mother sent to her recent memorial service. Personally, I prefer sending live plants rather than cut flowers. But her act of love across the miles and years was and is both touching and a comfort, even as the blossoms dry and fade in their vase.

In a fascinating coincidence, I was checking my Facebook page today and came across a lovely photo of a Christmas cactus in full bloom in an out-of-state relative’s post. She had been gifted the unusual orange-flowering plant by her mother who had in turn in inherited the plant from her own mother, now deceased, some 20 years ago. The sense of continuity and love in the posting and comments that followed sounded a chord in my own heart.

When my mother moved from Wisconsin to be near us three years ago, I had made a point also of relocating some of her favorite hostas to our home in Petoskey along with her stunning pebble birdbath and a garden statue of a young girl in a sunbonnet holding some gardening tools.

Everytime I weeded this summer, just days and weeks after my mom’s passing, I found my gaze straying to those tangible reminders of shared love and hope. You cannot grow a garden without either one of those things. And by summer’s end, mom’s hostas were thick enough that I anonymously gifted some shoots to our church garden in her memory.

Life moves on. Another summer is behind us. Early snow flurries remind us the long winter is coming. The annuals in mom’s strawberry pot on our deck overlooking the Bear River have flowered their last. But even as I describe their fate, I sense a surge of optimism. This too will pass and another spring will come.

Recently my spouse—a relatively new convert to gardening—shared a story of his indignation at a a landscaper he caught looking at the beds of a condo complex. Spotting a struggling bush that had fallen victim to problems with the community drip system, the guy gave the plant a hard kick with his boot and then yanked it up by the roots.

“Brutal,” my husband said. “What was he thinking? That plant was savable.”

I had to smile. Gardening and plants change our attitude toward what makes us human. And as we grieve the end of another growing season, somehow we gardeners appreciate even more fully the gift of green things growing. They keep us grounded in what really matters. Loving care. Family. Neighborliness. Generosity of spirit. Sharing.

All of it good.

Long-time Bay View resident, author and columnist Mary Agria is an avid community gardener during her summers in Northern Michigan. On the bestseller lists of area bookstores in 2006, her novel “Time in a Garden,” full of gardening wit and wisdom, explores the links between gardening and the ability to cope with love and loss in the changing seasons of our lives. “Time in a Garden” is available at area bookstores and online at http://www.maryagria.com. Send questions and/or comments to Mary Agria at agriainc@msn.com.