The Next Right Thing

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.

~Charles Dickens

Eight Marches ago, on one of those biting Lion / Lamb days when the chill seeps to your bone, but every so often the wind relents and the sun warms your face, I put my spade, my shovel, my rake, and my hopes in the back of my Ranger and drive out to Malwyd.

It was rangy. Cabgrass and truculent hollies. Old azaleas. A grove of gnarled andromeda, noble and twisted.

But also, woodchuck holes and poison ivy, striped petunias and pachysandra, flagstone and old wrought iron. Good bones but rampant: an ancient estate. Nothing but rambling roses, possibilities, trepidation.

They let me place my shovel in that unforgiving clay, and it became a project that fed my soul.

But first we lay the garden hose along the edge of what will become the perennial garden, and adjust it relentlessly until we find a rhythm.

It is audacious: our proposed bed claims much of the lawn. Swift approval: with a nod sweet labor begins. Trenching the edge with a sturdy Amish shovel, I turn the turf to reveal writhing grubs and an impoverished clay, sickly and orange. We work it with mushroom soil and manure and peat and sand. Each thrust into the crabgrass my shovel slides over slippery, hard, angry clay. I turn it and churn it and hope for the best.

These little plugs we plant, from the wholesale nursery in Bucks County, seem so unsubstantial against the scope of the place. But work is underway and does not cease.

Some seasons are impossibly fecund and benevolent: soaking rains, nourishing sun, impossible bounty. Other seasons are pinched, dry, angry, and sparse. Skunks spray, firethorn taunts, there is the day my feet swell and burst the laces of my boots after an allergic reaction to a hornet swarm.

But, always, the labor.

Paths built. Slate cut. Trees felled.

We build a pond, a terrace, an ambling walkway through a grove of crimson maples.

At some point boundaries no longer contain our desire: the neighboring house is bought and razed, the garden doubles. We restore the orchard to where it once had been.

Days at Malwyd passed in a glorious rhythm: a neighboring carillon chimes almost forgotten hymns at just the right moment.

I lose myself in the work, I relish these golden afternoons

But, last March was the time.

This thing I created, this thing I nourished and savored, that also fed me, was left to fend for itself.

Enough of tending a garden that is not my own, last year I turned toward home, unsure what I would find.

All that glorious preparation, all that sweet and sunny labor well spent.

That place where I knew every leaf, and had seen every season, and had labored blissfully until the sun gave way to a luminous moon.

That place where I knew the toads that clamored so frantically on fecund spring days.

That place where crimson stars fell from Japanese maples onto English ivy.

My best work. I left its care to others, in humility and gratitude.

I sought new gardens to tend.

March is a raw month, elemental.

March is sun warmed soil and wind driven rain. March is biting chill, and hope that soars like a great blue heron, taking sudden flight. March is a month to take stock of paths that led to whatever vineyard you now tend, and a month to mourn just a little for that other path you did not take.

I used to, many Marches ago, think that every time you loved and lost, it left you diminished. But, as Marches go by, I have come to realize: you never lose if your labor is love. It may turn you inside out, but next time, if you are lucky, it will lead you to a fruitful vineyard. Love won't leave you diminished, but only open to the next right thing, grateful for the labors that led you to the place you now stand.