The Garden of Fruition

 

fruition - noun - state of being actual, complete

Perhaps many of you out there are looking to find fruition somehow, searching for a sense of completeness. At the risk of sounding trite, the state of being actual may be close to being within your grasp. I'll give you a hint: perhaps the wholeness you have been desiring can be found where seeds meet soil and the vegetables and fruits of life grow abundantly. Yes, perhaps what you want can be found in a garden. 

I am a gardener; however, I am not a master gardener. I am a forever-inchoate landscaper who plays by ear, goes by intuition, and listens to those who have more experience with getting their hands soiled than I have. In April, I sold my house and my vast English garden on which I had labored for over twenty years, planting flowers, perennials but also annuals, annually. I got my tanned hands dirty, my crooked fingernails outlined with black, my Walmart sneakers and torn jeans muddy in the spring, summer, and fall. I didn't mind. It was all part of the plan: to work in collaboration with Nature to create beauty. According to my friends and relations, I succeeded and have the photographs to prove it. 

Strangely enough, I don't miss my miniature Versailles in Jersey, probably because I've replaced it with a vegetable garden, not mine per se, one that belongs to others, one that is kept alive by a community of us voluntary seedsmen who toil on arid land under the heat of the sun in order to help eliminate hunger and homelessness on a boulevard called Venice in a portion of L.A. with the same name. On Thursdays, I join a former stage actor who would rather work for a nonprofit than teach the children of movie stars just because she likes to be outdoors, watching and watering and waiting, producing good food and sharing it with us volunteers and the hapless few who live in their parked cars parallel to the garden. With downturned smiles, they watch us as we till, dig, hoe, pull, and plant. Their hands are as filthy as ours, but the mire does not come from gardening. Theirs originates from the grime of poverty and/or mental illness that takes opportunity and/or psychological/medical aid, not just soap and water, to wash it away. 

I can't save the world albeit I have been trying for about 45 years now. What I can do is plant one seed at a time and harvest what grows to fruition. It just makes me feel whole. Try it. You just may wind up feeling the same way.

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