The Grass is Greener…

…where you water it.

We planted strips of inexpensive shade-loving sod from Home Depot this year and it’s flourishing. The expensive full-sun sod our landscape guy planted last year is not.

We did everything this spring ourselves.

The sweet peat mulch we laid down looks great and loves the plants. Turns out it also loves the weeds. We cut back some of the Hydrangea too far but the boxwoods and Rhododendrons we planted look beautiful.

Feels good to be experiencing our own successes and failures.

I usually err on the side of feeling like surely everybody else knows more than I do! With the exception of how to love Leo, Finn, Joe and our dog Floyd, and maybe a few things about creativity, writing and running, I am a perennial novice.

BUT, I’m an eager student of everything! Except math.

This means that I am frequently guilty of looking over the fence at other peoples grass and wondering if I should be doing something differently or better.

This inquisitiveness is fueled by a combination of self-growth and paranoia.

What I forget is that just because full-sun sod works for someone else doesn’t mean it will work for me. In fact, odds are low it will.

This happens with friendships too.

Every now and then, Joe and I take a step back and reevaluate if our friendships are still feeding us. Does what made them work before, still work?

Some that begin as situationally relevant begin to erode under the pressure of depth and time. Some exist under a very particular set of rules and when we try to expand beyond them, the relationship breaks down.

This always feels like personal failure to me.

Not to Joe.

Sometimes peoples priorities change. Some people don’t want to grow anymore and resent that you do. Some people would rather stay stuck in the mud than figure a way out.

If you stay in the relationship you either have to stunt yourself or get pulled into the mud pit and complain about how hard is it to climb out.

Pine trees like to climb.

Trimming these trees will not lead to nice, flat-topped or rounded, shorter trees. If you cut that top leader, it begins a wild scramble by the tree to re-establish a leader. It completely unbalances the root-to-shoot ratio, which opens the tree up to disease.

Trim my leader and my roots wither.

A dwarf lilac tree on the other hand maintain a predictable beautiful canopy.

The question is not whether pine trees or dwarf lilacs are better. Not whether we it is more advantageous to be full sun or shade-loving but rather, are we being true to who we are?

Different trees flourish better in different environments.

I get confused sometimes and think if I tried hard enough I could tame myself into being lovely and little.

But I am going to try to remember plant myself in the soil I thrive in.