The Quiet Voice of Whimsy

Welcome to Tuesday’s with Chel.

Each week Chel Micheline of Gingerblue will offer her perspectives on our Bliss Habits. Please enjoy the wisdom and clarity she offers.

I’m not really a whimsical person. I wish I could say I am, but the fact of the matter is that I spend far more time *planning* life than vicariously embracing it. But as I was thinking about whimsy, I realized that it was only very recently that I acted on a “whim”, and it turned into something that has changed my life.

Last summer, we had some family visiting so we all decided to spend an afternoon at the local botanical gardens. As we strolled through the beautiful grounds, I found myself wishing for my own lush garden. As soon as the thought popped into my mind, I brushed it off. I did this every time we visited the gardens. Why did I brush the idea away? Gardening was not a talent I had, or even considered. I just WASN’T “a gardener”. Period. It wasn’t in my list of things about myself that I knew to be true.

The house I grew up in was surrounded with neatly manicured bushes, shrubs, and trees. The kind of landscape that looks good but requires little maintenance. My parents were very busy, and gardening was a chore for them, not a hobby. On four weekends a year, they grabbed the hedge trimmer and a ladder and that was the extent of “gardening”.

As an adult, and living in my own spaces (mostly condos and apartments), I would sometimes purchase a plant or two, one of those tiny things you get at the grocery store that seem to be intended as throwaway hostess gifts. And when those poor plants died because they outgrew their pots or weren’t getting enough sun or water or whatever else, I would just make a firm resolution not to torture a poor plant EVER AGAIN and move forward.

Even after my husband and I married and moved into our own house, there was no discussion of a garden proper. My daughter, Gracie, had just come home and we were too busy trying to figure out parenthood to bother thinking about plants. The house had come very nicely landscaped and two very nice young guys showed up  twice a month to keep things looking tame.

So, up until last summer, gardening was just not on my radar. Don’t get me wrong- I always *wished* for a garden. I think flowers are the most spectacular things in the world. The idea of having pots full of fresh herbs and vegetables just outside my back door made my mouth water. I just didn’t think I had the “gift” of gardening. It seemed like something set in stone- either you knew how to cultivate and grow things or you didn’t.

Fast forward to last summer, that day at the Naples Botanical Gardens.

As we walked around, my cousin began to talk about her own garden. This was the first I had ever heard of ANYONE in our family having a garden, so my ears perked up and I listened with interest.

She explained that her garden wasn’t a cultured paradise with neatly trimmed plants in rows, or a lush and manicured place for quiet contemplation. Instead, her garden was a root-y and wild backyard that had come with their house and that she was gradually taming.

She told me about the many afternoons she spent out there, knee-deep in mud, pulling out weeds while triumphantly shouting out lines of favorite poems- “Dead Poets’ Society” style. It was tremendously cathartic for her and had turned into a passion. Her wild yard was becoming a haven, a sanctuary, a paradise.

Something about the idea of my mild-mannered cousin, a 2^nd grade teacher in her 40’s with two grown children, standing in the dirt and yelling poetry sparked something very bright deep inside me. I don’t know what the heck it was, but I haven’t felt a strong urge like that in a VERY long time. A little tiny seed (no pun intended) that had been dormant inside me for most of my life seemed to burst open and demand that I pay attention.

And that little voice told me that it was time to start a garden. A garden of my own.

I put the idea on hold, because, like I said- gardening was never on my radar. At all. And you can imagine the million reasons I came up with not to pursue the idea. But that little voice of whimsy kept resurfacing and sort of whispering to me.

A few weeks later I was out with Gracie one afternoon and I decided (on a whim!) to stop at Home Depot to just LOOK at the plants. Gracie and I left the store with four small plants in plastic containers. I had no idea what they were, or what to do with them, so I stuck them on the back of my lanai and tentatively watered them and tended to them.

Those plants responded by growing. A lot.

A few weeks later I got some bigger pots and some better soil. A few weeks after that, a trip to an actual nursery that resulted in a car trunk full of plants. Then there were seed packets. Then, bigger planters. Fertilizer. Bulbs. Garden sheers replaced the crappy pair of scissors I took from the junk drawer. I started spending at least an hour tending to the plants every single day. It was only when I found myself with an armful of seed catalogs, deciding which exotic species to try my hand at next that I realized- I’m a gardener. Where on earth did this all come from?

It came from a whim. My whim to start her own garden enabled me to tune into that my *own* sense of whimsy, which seemed to have been sitting dormant for a very long time. It was coming awake and alive inside me after years of being silenced by “responsibility” and the loud cackle of my inner critic.

I’ll never forget the feeling I had that afternoon at the Botanical Gardens. And while I had no idea what might come of it, that voice of whimsy was so *different* than anything I had heard in a very long time. So much so that I felt compelled to listen.

And if I hadn’t, I would have been denied this amazing opportunity to not only develop a new skill that has brought *so* much peace and into my life, but I would have been denied the opportunity to learn something new about myself and redefine myself once again- I am a gardener. My daughter is becoming a gardener, and maybe it will be something she enjoys and will pass on to the next generation. Who knows where this will lead?

All I know is that it’s been an amazing and rewarding experience. And I’m anxious to hear my voice of inner whimsy speaking again, and to find out what the next adventure might be.