A Colonial Garden
Inside a white picket fence, a small colonial homestead encompasses its tomatoes and squash with creeping vines and rambling flowers. Liliana explored its well-worn dirt paths that ambled here and there in a somewhat-planned yet open-ended pattern. I so admire gardens such as this relatively small "kitchen garden" because they inspire me to work harder, grow more, weed more, harvest more, and design more. While I equally adore visiting lavishly ornate formal gardens (which we also visited during vacation), I realize that these smaller gardens are the ones that thrived on an unpaid yet loyal and fevered commitment to tend, to love, to coax the fruit, vegetables, and flowers without the extra benefit of paid help or large planting budgets. When I see the weeds poking through here and there, I can't help but think of all the weeds that aren't there, that were plucked away. When I see the rough pathways, I marvel that there is any pathway at all when vigorous weeds can so quickly take over an area. I am simply overwhelmed by all the toil that has taken place here.
I feel humbled that this year I have barely begun to weed my garden and autumn is already upon us. Small but lovely gardens give me hope. Perhaps next year will be the year that I begin to truly garden, that I daily watch over even a tiny patch of land and keep those weeds away daily. This year, I barely managed my window boxes and container vegetable gardens but next year... well, next year has no weeds in it yet!
Oh, I like the thought that "next year has no weeds in it yet!"
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