On Planting, and Growing Things in General

Addressed to my dear readers,

Today I examined the miniature garden that flourishes on the back porch. All of the plants seem to be doing quite well, with the exception of the Marguerite Daisies.

This is supremely vexing; when I purchased the beautiful daisy bush at Home Depot, it was a veritable pile of bright, golden flowers. I potted it and hung it on the porch, and by that very night the Eastern Starlings had found it and started tearing it to shreds. Mr. H would run out onto the porch and try to chase away the birds, snapping them with a kitchen towel, but they were very persistent in their cause; even more annoying, they wouldn't even take the blossoms, but would just snap them off and leave them laying on the porch. Now, it is a pitiful stack of spiky stems and browning, drooping blossoms, half torn by starlings.

The rest of the garden seems to be doing quite well, though - the herbs, flowers, tomatoes, lettuce, and radishes. There are some hardy looking cucumber sprouts that are recovered from what looked suspiciously like a sharp beak that had broken the leaves off... Not to be pointing feathers here, but ...

Growing a marriage is, naturally, a profitable pursuit, and far more fruitful than pruning tomato plants. It takes a lot of care, one can imagine; little cliche seeds of love and kindness, and all that rot. We can always learn tricks from experienced gardners - I learned how to prune tomatoes from a lady who had grown them many years. She showed me which branches to trim and when, which branches would bear fruit. She showed me how to cut off the waste, and leave the good. In a marriage, you sometimes have to cut off wasteful branches - selfishness, laziness, a constant inward focus. All of these branches can take up a lot of space in the terra cotta pot of life, and a lot of energy in the photosynthesis of life, and a lot of emotional strength (I do not think plants have a comparable feature to emotion). Sometimes, it is better to just snap the branch off and leave it in the burn pile. Give more room for the fruitful branches of love, sympathy, forbearance, and selflessness to grow.

With these valuable seeds of truth, I close my second epistle.

Sincerely,



Mrs H
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