My father gave me and old book: “Introduction to Philosophy” by George Thomas White Patrick, Ph.D. (1924). In it, Patrick gave several definitions of philosophy, including “wonder which has turned to serious and reflective thought.”
Wonder is what I feel about the garden. It spurs amazement and appreciation, putting a magnifying glass on the beauty, simplicity and complexity of nature.
Our myopic view of life makes it easy to forget about the beauty and simplicity of life itself. The daily grind of human life pulls us into a very self-involved place. We worry about money to pay for the house and ensure a good education for the children.
The garden pulls me back.
It grounds me and gives me a tool to help my children learn to connect with simpicity and a slower pace… a more natural pace. We observe, turn the dirt, pull the weeds, nurture and enjoy observing again.
Patrick observed that humans invented philosphy as a way of defining things that are different from those empirical scientific things that can be observed and defined with laws. We ask for the reasons why and look for meaning:
Tomorrow I shall do many things. Some of them will be right and some wrong. What is right and what is wrong? All about me I see men striving for money, fame and pleasure. Are these really the highest values, or are there other values that are higher and better, such as peace, simplicity, faith, love, work, the enjoyment of art, the pursuit of science? What is most worthwhile?
It is how we take up the pursuit of meaning in life, of philosophy, that varies from person to person.
For me, gardening is a direct and easily understood path to examining the meaning of life… and sharing it with Emma and Grace.
Gardening is what my husband calls ‘puttering.’ Very apt. A boat that putters along a river’s edge is guided by a person who is in no hurry, and so doesn’t miss much. Little does my husband know that spending a half an hour examining broccoli leaves for cabbage worms or checking the bean vines to see how the growing pods are progressing benefits everyone within the living zone around the garden.
Puttering in the garden is my way of pulling out of my own personal hamster wheel of checklists, concerns, anxieties and so-called productive tasks involved with the daily grind.
But I also believe philosophy in a garden is “catching.” Everyone who lives beside a garden is taken in to some extent. After all, it is compelling. A perfect bloom, a ripe fruit, a rogue pumpkin… it is good to know life is at ease in its beauty and complexity. Anyone can appreciate this.
Part of what I am seeing rising to the top during my gardening moments is a realization that my greatest contribution while I am here won’t have anything to do with my list of career accomplishments, it will be what lessons I can pass on to my children simply by putting a garden in our backyard and asking them to enter it and look around. Encourage them to develop a sense of wonder.
At the same time, I must encourage myself to open the door to learning for my children then stand back and watch what they do with it… without pushing them forcibly. These are lessons that have to be learned first-hand… not poured in with a funnel.
Buddhists say that the learner and the teacher together make the teaching. Showing a child that life is a magical thing that happens on its own (in spite of us), and thrives when we care for it– is perhaps among the most valuable things they can learn.
All that needs to happen is for them to follow me out to the garden and they step into wonderment with ease. If I can harden and make more permanent the practice of ’being’ in my life– it might just become the greatest gift I can give to my children.
I believe that all true gardeners have discovered that the real beauty of a garden is the peace and calm that you feel while you are “puttering,” and how it connects you to the moment, and to the magic. You have expressed it beautifully. (& great pictures, by the way)
- Gloria