Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

I usually am not one who applies personality to inanimate objects, but…

I found myself asking the question in this blog headline as I got up this morning, our next to the last before we head off to Europe on a long-planned river trip on the Danube from Bucharest to Budapest.

Do gardens talk?  Like the one on our deck above Illahe Hills Country Club where I play most of my golf here in Salem, Oregon?  Or the flowers and bushes in our front yard?

Well, I would say they talk to me each morning as I see them shining brightly in the sun.  If I listen.  They speak comfort and beauty.  They speak relaxation.  They speak wonder.

Then, I read a post from the proprietor of Brooks Winery in Amity, Oregon where we are members.  She wrote about the person who tends the gardens at Brooks where, among other things, vegetables are grown that make their way onto the tables for those who eat and drink at Brooks. 

The gardener is Shannon Meyhew, who, in the spirit of Brooks’ environmental commitments, also goes by the title “sustainability director.” 

Here is what she wrote:

“These long summer evenings, with golden hours that stretch late into dusk have been an invitation to visit the gardens of friends.  Each time I walk into these spaces, I leave inspired by planting combinations, trellis styles, and an appreciation for the imperfections of others’ spaces that remind me of my own.

“I love to ask how old plants are, to hear the story of how a particular garden bed was started, and what the space looked like when it began.

“It was during a twilight conversation in a friend’s garden, mosquitos nipping at our necks and that quiet hush which descends during dusk, that we came to the end of the tour. I was left in awe at the 10 years of work, of one gardener in a single space.

“In that silence, she shrugged, saying as if in summary for it all, ‘I can’t make sense of the garden anymore. It had formed into its own thing.’  Another longtime gardener, a friend, whispered back, ‘That’s how it’s supposed to be.  That’s the magic of it.’

“I thought about those words in my own garden this morning.  Walking the paths, I remembered the younger version of myself.  She came into this space with so many ideas, and with them, she shifted a garden around herself.

“Early on, I was determined to remove clashing color patterns.  I kept to the adage that yellows and reds never go together, and that hot pink should be used with restraint.  I diligently followed the rules of respected gardeners who said that single plantings in a garden border were forbidden.

“Instead, I planted in the matrix style that was advocated for by mainstream designers with multiples of plants, only in odd numbers.  With these rules held firmly in my head, I went about sculpting a garden, determined that I knew what was right.

“In the five years I have been in this garden, what was here before me has continued to quietly grow, despite my trying to dictate where and how it grows.  Fireweed consumes much of the garden beds with a ferocity and determination that leaves me stunned and unwilling to pull it.

“Yarrow appears in every corner with a persistence that silences any attempts to quiet it.  Alongside this, the columbine continues to self-seed with zealous indifference to the fact that I have long decided we have quite enough of it, and any more is really just too much.

“In the spaces of the garden that I started from scratch, I can see a shadow of what I intended.  The rose spirea hedge that forms the backdrop to the pond is growing uniformly.  However, unexpectedly, a verbena pops out within it, having seeded itself joyously in the flanks of the plants, perfectly indifferent to the fact that purples and hot pinks do not go together. “Despite the mismatch, it somehow works, so I leave that oddball there for the swallowtail butterfly that loves the blooms. 

“It’s funny how in gardening we think we are steering the ship.  Somehow along the way, the garden begins to take control, and for those humble enough to listen, we simply follow its lead.

“I thought I was creating this garden.  I had a direction and a mind of what it should be.  Instead, I now sheepishly do my best to keep the path walkable and let the garden guide me.

“So often, the plants are telling us something about the spaces where they grow.  The native twinberry that self-seeds shows me the wetter, slower-draining areas.  Clary sage crops up in those areas of soil that are dry and exposed to full sun.  I like to think the yarrow is there to protect the garden, its strong volatile aromas defending the space from pests.

“Looking down at the garden from above, I can’t help but agree that trying to make sense of the space will only confound you.  There is no order, but I think the wildness is what calls certain people to this garden, such wild spaces are so rare in this world.

“We are all told to conform to ways of looking and acting.  Maybe for once we can let that native self-heal takeover a corner.  Perhaps it will inspire us to let our own hair down, to stop looking for perfection in ourselves and our orderly lives.  

“Instead of shaping the garden, what if we let it shape us? What if we released ourselves to the wildest parts of our souls, those corners of ourselves we have long weeded and mowed into a form that society finds acceptable?  Maybe we can all learn something from fireweed.

“With Love from The Garden,

“Shannon.”

Good words from Shannon.  She has better ones than I have as I look out at our garden on our deck.  Or look in our front yard as bumble bees do their pollinating work on our plants.

So, I am trying to let the garden speak to me in the silence and glow of this and other mornings.