when to stop?

Tabor, at her wonderful new landscaping blog http://taborsyard.blogspot.com/    caught the gardener's sensibility perfectly when she said something to the effect that she and her husband will soon be gardening in their new place, which means moving perennials and annuals around ceaselessly.  It occured to me this morning when I was transplanting Japanese Iris back to the original place I planted them just a short year ago, that besides the fact Tabor's lucky to have a husband willing to do unmotorized yardwork, she's spot-on about what I've been doing in my garden for the last twelve years.  In fact, my husband often reminds me that if I'd let things stay put a few years, then maybe they'd fill in like I want them to.   

   This morning's gardening reminded me that I've told my writing students something similar for the last twenty years, when they ask how to tell when a piece of work is finished.  I tell them when you find you're rewriting your revisions with the same sentences you used on the first draft, it's time to quit.  Michael Curtis, longtime fiction editor of the Atlantic, once told me (at a writer's conference) about his long-ago college roommate Thomas Pynchon, who had trouble letting his manuscripts go out the door because he never thought they were finished.  And I've heard plenty of painters say the same thing.  A friend recently saw one of his paintings he did for my husband about thirty years ago, and he asked us if he could take it back to his studio and do some touch-ups, make it better.   

   I've learned to deal with this difficulty to think things finished in my teaching, by literally not giving myself time to tinker or expand on ideas.  I wait till the last minute to grade papers and make the next day's lesson-plan, because I know that teaching can always be improved, and if I let myself, I'll grade, re-grade, and tweak lesson-plans all night.  If you let yourself, you can see a lesson-plan, a garden, a manuscript, a painting, and many other projects, I suspect, in perpetual development. 

   And that adds a new glitch to cutting down the size of the gardens to accommodate aging.  Cutting the garden space in half this summer has necessitated a whole new design, and I've transplanted more than I can remember ever doing in previous summers.  I keep looking forward to the day it's all done, but Tabor's post made me aware that that day will never come unless I change my own thinking.  I've got to shift from seeing the garden as a work-in-progress to finished.  Any suggestions (besides hypnosis)?        

Comments

[Annie in Austin]

When you do this constant plant-moving, don't you add amendments to the spot before the new plant goes in? If so, isn't this just a version of what gardeners were instructed to do in those old English gardening books? In the photos, all the plants lay on the ground next to the perennial border from which they'd been dug. Loads of compost and manure were added and the plants were replaced. They'd do it every couple of years, I think. We're doing the same thing but move the plants one by one!

I always hoped that moving plants around would confuse the bugs!

Annie

[joared]

Excellent topic and thoughts about "when to stop." I'm certainly no professional or expert on writing which I'm sure you've been able to discern quite readily. I do enjoy the activity. Occasionally, I've discovered some writing has left me with a clear feeling that it's finished. All too often re-writing, editing, is a never-ending process with cutting consolidating content a major goal of which I am most aware continues to need my further attention.

I'm not into gardening in the manner which you describe. I just want to put in plants, bushes, flowers once, then enjoy them flourishing, growing, for many years to come. If disappointed with them, then I'll replace them, but I don't want to move them around. Next planting I want to be something new. I delight in taking cuttings to see if I can root them.

I also like cacti and succulents that can weather the dry and heat with which inland Southern Calif. must contend. Hope to get some of the yard converted to natural landscaping in the future, but still want some grass, though with water issues here, grass is and increasingly will be, a conservation issue. Have been intrigued with Jude's occasional references to their water recycling conservation practices in Australia.

That said, I do enjoy and appreciate the type garden described, that you have pictured here, ML. It truly is like a painting, creative work of art, but just with plants. Will look forward to seeing pictures of Tamar's creation in the future.

[Ronni Bennett]

What a bunch of thoughts you've raised in me with this post:

1. What a wonderful, funny, rueful phrase, "husband willing to do unmotorized yardwork," applicable to so man other things...

2. "...by literally not giving myself time to tinker or expand on ideas." Some of us - me - do the same thing but for a different reason: although I am quite industrious about many chores and projects, I am also capable of calculating the amount of work to be accomplished with energy level, resources and deadline to arrive at the exact latest moment at which to begin and still meet the deadline without having to pull any all-nighters.

What this accomplishes for me is that that if I am (or anyone else is) dissatisfied with the result, I can always say, truthfully, "well, I ran out of time and this is the best I could do." Saves a lot of self-recrimination and second-guessing :-)

3. I think gardens are a good metaphor for life which, of course, is not done until we depart this mortal coil. That notwithstanding, you've cut the garden in half, but as I've discovered on tiny deck garden this year, there's always something.

I don't think it's a matter of changing your thinking to see the garden as finished - it won't be. But, rather, the task is to change your thinking about anything - living ones in particular - being finished. Not possible, Mary Lee.

[Dave Shearon]

Connecting this post with your self-study of Positive Psychology, I was reminded of The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz. The concepts of "maximizing" and "satisficing" became frequently-used terms!

[Chancy]

I had a friend in oil painting class who never, never thought a painting she did was finished. This used to drive me bonkers as her paintings looked much better when she just stopped at a certain point and quit tinkering with the color or the composition endlessly. I am quit sure that Van Gogh stopped before he was "finished" and to me that is the beauty of his paintings.

[notdotdot]

Okay. PERENNIAL means to me, put it in and rejoice that it's there and I don't have to re-plant. ANNUAL means having to put it in every year. I
think you're talking about people who are most comfortable "in the process" as opposed to those who are most comfortable when it's completed. So both are served in the garden. Of course, this is assuming you've got the whole design thing worked out. Yet another area to fuss with if you're happy "in the process".

[Terri]

Excellent topic and post. I really don't have any suggestions because I think this is something we all have to deal with in our own way. And of course, we're all very different on how we approach things.
But for me....I've really never had a problem "letting go" with my writing. Oh sure, I read things now that I wrote just a few years ago and sometimes I cringe....thinking God, I could have done that SO much better. True...maybe I could have. But not at that time.
So when I let go, I'm already moving forward and thinking ahead....and hopefully, I'll arrive there with a lot more growth.
So I think it's more about growth. In order to grow, we have to let go.

[Elfie]

Ok, thing is, that I find that a smaller garden requires more and more work to seem tidy and well-planted. The smaller space tends to make it more difficult for me to ignore small spots where I am dissatisfied: I can take in the whole with my appraising glance, and nothing escapes my tinkering mind. With that said, I find that the one trait that keeps me from endlessly tinkering with everything in my life is the comfort of habit. If I can hold off making a change to something for a time, I find that I get used to it/come to enjoy it a good deal of the time. Either the plant will grow in or what is around it will match it better, or just my eye has become accustomed to it and finds it calming.

Writing doesn't work that way for me. I come to get sick of a thing before I stop tinkering. Sometimes I think if I were a better writer things would be eventually tell me they were finished in their own voice. No such luck.

[Tabor]

I am an anal retentive and tinkering in the garden keeps me from tinkering in peoples lives.

[joared]

"well, I ran out of time and this is the best I could do." Saves a lot of self-recrimination and second-guessing :-)"

A metaphor for life, Ronni.