On Cultivation

"Wonder - is not precisely Knowing." Emily Dickinson

(art by Kanae Kouno)

Over Spring Break, I have been spending more and more time in my garden. As I have, I have also been meditating on the idea of cultivation. We live in a culture built not on cultivation but rampant consumerism. A focus on creating scarcity to drive the market based solely on fear. It is discouraging and disheartening. I watch, aghast, as our society seems to be moving farther and farther apart, as divides grow bigger and bigger, deeper and deeper. Cultivation is resistance against this consumerism that is focused only on the immediate. Cultivation is not about instant gratification, as any gardener will tell you. To plant is an act of hope. As Vita Sackville-West wrote in The Garden, “Small pleasures must correct great tragedies, therefore of gardens in the midst of war I bold tell.”

The world, throughout history, has felt on the verge of collapse. We find ourselves even more so today. How do we counteract despair in the face of existential annihilation? As our society and our world appears to fracture and fray, how do we stitch things back together? How do we deal with our own fear, frailties and feelings of hopelessness?

This morning, I met my sister in what has become our yearly tradition: going to the annual County Extension Office’s Master Gardener Sale. It is all native plants grown by local gardeners, who are even there to answer all of your questions. Whenever I talk to them, I not only ask them questions about the plants but also about themselves and how they got into garden. I listen to their stories. So often these are tied to loved ones: a parent or grandparent. It is usually rooted in love, in remembrance, in the hope of continuing cultivating beauty.