I love my garden.  Gardening is like church for me—connecting with my mortality, my own expressiveness, my own recyclability and mostly with the extravagant abundance of creation.  I dig in to the earth, happy that my nails will have dirt in them throughout the spring and summer, happy to be so connected, despite being in the center of the city I love, despite my interest in all things human (as opposed to nature)—art, music, dance, theatre and great literature.  Why am I so drawn to the worms burrowing in tunnels through the soil that each year becomes more rich and fertile because of the compost I have gathered?  I love finding old avocado pits that are barely hanging together and crushing them with the most gentle squeeze and finding a worm inside.  It makes me think of last year’s guacamole being scooped up on chips and into my friends’  greedy mouths.

I love it when the crocuses and tulips peek their pale green tips through the dark earth in the spring sunlight of morning.  Each day, another centimeter or two.  And when I happen to skip a day or two, I am struck everytime by the growth and changes.  One year, a pumpkin patch grew out of the compost heap.  Big pumpkins that served at the front door on Halloween night.  Another year, it was buttercup squash.    What tremendous generosity.

Sometimes I am overwhelmed, almost embarrassed, by the sensuality and beauty of my garden that shows itself even when I do nothing.  It is tangled, multi-colored, full of scents and impossible to keep organized.  Most days, I have no interest in organizing my garden, I want to simply marvel at its chaos and expressiveness.  But some days I wish that it were more orderly the way some people’s gardens are—never a weed, grass always green and cropped close to the ground.  I know that I would have to be a different person to have a garden like this.

In the end, I always choose to let my garden explode, and on good days, I delight in it.