Planting a New Year: A Resolution
When I was very small (and so, consequently, the world was very small) my grandmother and I would walk out on a mild day with snow still underfoot to "survey the grounds." Crunching around the house, our coats open and our heads hatless, we stopped by the cellar door to ponder where the columbine would appear. And by the front porch to see how the roses kept. And under the apple trees to remark on last year’s violet crop and to imagine how far they would spill out into the coming spring. And last by the back door to plan the kitchen garden—the one place where the flowers were always different, depending on what Grandma sent for in the seed catalog in winter. We would "walk it": fifteen footsteps long, four wide. Then we would go inside and page through the catalog—zinnias? daisies? coneflowers? a mystery mix?
I am older now (and so, I see, is the world). I have since "surveyed" much larger grounds: Biltmore gardens for example, with acre upon acre of splendid, extraordinary flora, and Kensington gardens, tilled to perfection after generations of gardeners—quite the best in the world—have labored there. And private gardens of wealthy acquaintances complete with statuary and fountains and peacocks. Spectacular places, all.
And yet I find that the plot behind my apartment—fifteen steps by four—calls out to be surveyed this time of year, every year. It takes a little while, and so I must choose a day when I will have adequate leisure to do it properly. First stop, the peony—this year the shorn stalks poked through snow like the weathered posts of a minuscule corral. The peony is terribly important: I planted it upon a year and nurtured it for five years and then, oh wonder of wonders, it at last gushed great drooping cabbages of softest pink, and I, finally, could say I was an adult: I all alone had got a peony to bloom.
There are many other stops: the little lilac, tipping out too soon again with little bits of green; the mints; the spiky asparagus fern; the bare spaces where lilies of the valley faithfully push through; the hostas; the day lilies; the periwinkle vines; the hardy spurge and ivy; blank circles waiting for goatsbeard; and ah! the brown crowns where giant ferns from the woods of home will unroll and feather out with such generosity I will have to go out every day to wonder at them.
And it seems it is just so with my life this time of year. I feel compelled to walk around what is mine, considering the blooms of the year past and thinking ahead to what I might next plant and later cherish. A survey of these grounds may seem rather unremarkable to those who have larger gifts and larger experiences and larger circles. I, in fact, used to be just a little ashamed of my small gardens (both in and out) and their ordinary blooms, and a little jealous of those bigger gardens that look so perfect from outside the gates.
But now I see it is no matter, the circumference of the place. The pleasure is in the composition. There is as much joy in one fine peony bloom, so long as it be mine to enjoy, as in a thousand nodding roses belonging to someone else.
And as I walk my "inner grounds’’ again this year, I resolve to be as pleased with the gardens that have been given to me there as I am with the little Kensington behind my place. I resolve to look more carefully and appreciatively at the small moments that spring up and even crowd that garden, for is not life but the compilation of little things? I shall not ask for any larger garden, for I find I cannot take in all the wonders that this one I have affords me, nor can I even keep it perfectly weeded.
Both in and out, I have the garden God knows is best for me. He plants one and I the other. And both, as I survey the grounds at this turn of year, seem to me very large and very full indeed.
Alice Bronson is an English teacher and a freelance writer.