Draine: Garden epiphany starts new year

By Cathie Draine | Tuesday, April 03, 2007

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In our house we have two sorts of Aha! moments. One is the Major Life Decision, the MLD, and the other is the personal epiphany. The MLD seems more a self-indulgent choice rather than one of insight.

For example, I can play the MLD card to justify my decision to be in the garden rather than to dust the furniture.

Many years ago when we lived in the Canary Islands (Spain), we joined the crowd filling the narrow cobbled streets of the medieval part of Las Palmas to watch, amidst lights and flowers and music, the parade of camels and the Magi to celebrate the Festival of Three Kings or the visiting of the baby Jesus by the Wise Men. It was these memories wakened by the approaching (Jan. 6) Christian celebration of Epiphany (or Twelfth Night — the last of the 12 days of Christmas) that encouraged me to explore the phenomenon of insight and new awareness — the personal epiphany.

Epiphany with a capital "E" commonly is a religious reference to the appearance of the Magi. But epiphany with a lower case "e" is a Greek word that means manifestation, appearance, or showing forth. And sometime in recent centuries, epiphany came to describe (according to our dictionary) a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely or commonplace occurrence or experience.

Although personal epiphanies, at least in my experience, are not accompanied by thunderbolts, blazing light or other cosmic theatrics, I would add to the definition that the person experiencing it is changed — gradually perhaps — but thought and behavior are emphatically changed.

Although I would say the gardening year never ends, traditionally the first month of a new year is a time of quiet reflection, goal setting and personal examination. Which brings us to the garden in which and from which I have received the beneficent harvest of epiphanies.

The first of two significant epiphany moments that have occurred to me seems simple. I learned to love, not just tolerate, but love and appreciate insects. Remembering that epiphanies are not introduced by thunderclaps, mine began with growing storm of dissatisfaction with the amount of energy I was spending hating insects. And I was conflicted because I am reluctant to use killing chemicals.

Providentially Eric Grissell's book, Insects and Gardens, arrived and as I read, the epiphany began. In straightforward and often hysterically funny prose he made it clear that gardens are absolutely dependent for their survival on the activities of insects, which outnumber us by incomprehensible numbers. He encouraged the reader to understand, recognize and support the dynamics that the plants and insects establish cooperatively in a healthy garden.

Insects overwhelmingly prefer to eat each other, and almost any insect attack on plants is a default, last-ditch behavior. Insects are lazy creatures and inflict little damage in a mixed, rather than row-crop garden. And here is the part that has a bit of an epiphany-inspired thunderclap: the greater the diversity of insects that are drawn to and supported by the garden, the less plant damage will occur which results in improved plant health and productivity.

The equivalent of the bright light experience was the following revelation: the garden knows more about being a garden that I do. Roles in our garden changed. My task, to nourish this intuitive perception about the reality of the dynamics of the garden, was initiated, thankfully by a simple, homely and commonplace occurrence experience. My challenge is to act on the epiphany.

The other epiphany seems more cerebral and less tangible. It was the result of myriad factoids that ganged up on me to produce one of those pounding-your-temples-with-your-fists "I've got it!" moments.

Over time I moved from nodding realization to visceral understanding of the great truth expressed by other nature and garden writers that, "You can't do (begin caps) JUST (end caps) one thing." I've long been comfortable with what seems to me to be to be a cyclical rather than straight-line state of existence. I thought I understood that everything was connected. I could quote with probably superficial understanding and minimal personal application the English poet John Donne's piercing observation (begin italics) (in Devotions upon Emergent Occasions [1624] ) that "…No man is an island…every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee". (end italics)

Then as I read about and observed the connected activities of soils, plants and insects, I began to be aware that often, not always, but often my best intentions made manifest in the garden created a domino event of action causing change, causing response, causing change, causing response that became anything but simple. I could not do just one thing; I could not make just one change; everything was connected. Everything I did or do jiggles the living chain. The challenge then, as I perceive it, is how can I garden as a partner in the process, a member of the team, a student? The criteria for gardening decisions is clearly (begin italics) the bright light moment (end italics) felt by me: How can I cause the least harm?

I suppose it would be easy to view that revelation of the gardener (me) as an agent of harm as slightly dark and ponderous. I prefer to see it as an opportunity to learn more about soil dynamics, to understand a plant's changing nutritional needs at various stages in its development, to welcome without harming the birds and insects that inhabit the gardens, to reaffirm the garden as a living partner in pleasure.

And, with the greatest respect, to appreciate the nearness of Epiphany as an opportunity to reflect that epiphanies whenever they occur offer open doors to expanded thought and new understanding. That's a pretty good start for the year.