On tending

Hello, friends. Welcome to my May June newsletter, For the Noticers. I’m so glad you’re here. Read on for some thoughts about what I’m noticing lately…

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I spent an hour out back on a recent warm evening, pulling a pile of weeds (wild garlic, clover, bittersweet nightshade) from the ragged-edged, crowded flowerbeds on my patio. The irises I clumsily divided last season (after we had zero blooms last summer) are a fountain of purple this year, their ruffled blooms frothing over the edge of the flowerbed, a little bowed down by recent rains.

Every day or two, I water the motley collection of seedlings scattered along the back steps: snapdragons, zinnias, a few brave basil spears, two kinds of tomatoes. Who knows if any of them will flourish; gardening is a constant experiment, an exercise in hope and vulnerability. I keep hoping, keep watering, keep re-potting them when necessary, wondering if the combination of sun and care (and benign neglect) will prove ideal for growth.

The next night, I found myself at Eastie Farm, crouched over a shin-high raised bed, surrounded by a forest of garlic sprouts and new, green shoots of corn and squash. I pulled an army of tiny weeds from the rich, dark soil, sniffing as the scent of cilantro and chamomile (from neighboring beds) filled the air. Later, I dug a few shallow holes in that same bed and planted pollinator flowers: foxglove, black-eyed Susans, echinacea. I’ve never grown any of those myself, but (hopefully) come late summer, that bed will be a feast for both the bees and my delighted eyes.

The word that kept coming to mind, both nights, was tend.

I’d spent both those days at the nonprofit where I work, doing a different kind of tending: emails and social media, yes, but also relationships with my colleagues, who work so hard to provide artistic opportunities for our young people at ZUMIX. Some days, it’s so easy to put my head down and get lost in cyberspace, trying to check items off the to-do list, juggling an ever-changing mix of tasks. But I enjoy my days much more – and the work goes better, too – when I take time to joke with Corey or greet Madeleine, wave to Alliyah at the front desk, pet Gigi the dog, or poke my head in the recording studio to ask Jamie how the repair work is going.

This week, I whipped up a colorful flyer for a colleague’s birthday party, and interviewed another one for the ZUMIX blog. That turned into a conversation about all kinds of things, and I sat on the couch laughing, laptop firmly closed, as two coworkers told wild stories about summer road trips and too many mosquitoes.

Before all that, I spent a blissful long weekend in Atlanta with two longtime friends, perhaps not tending so much as being tended, on a body and soul level. We spent three days taking walks with their dogs, soaking up the beauty of the Atlanta Botanical Garden, eating a combination of takeout and home-cooked meals, and talking as hard as we could, for hours, about books and faith, feminism and body image, memories and moving, and a million other things.

Tending is, or can be, hard work: sometimes it takes effort, like pulling the weeds or scrubbing my bathroom sink with baking soda or sweeping the wide-plank wood floors in my apartment that never stay pristine, even when it’s not high pollen season. Sometimes it takes patience and care: my seedlings, and the plants at Eastie Farm, will benefit from regular watering, but they may take weeks or months to show any real progress or bear fruit (or flowers).

Sometimes tending looks like a big, soaking dose of attention, like my weekend with Shanna and Grace in Atlanta: those intimate conversations, mellow hours spent sitting on the porch, and episodes of Somebody Feed Phil will nourish my soul for weeks to come. And sometimes, despite my best efforts, nothing much seems to grow. There’s a flowerbed out back where I’ve scattered multiple seeds over the years, but it’s remained stubbornly bare, for now. (Maybe I need to test the soil, or amend it, to get anything to stick.)

Tend shares some of its Latin and Anglo-French roots with tendency, including words that mean to direct, to stretch, to spread out, to aim. And isn’t that what I’m trying to do, as I tend my space, my garden, my life? As I fold my laundry, text my friends, make sure I wash the dishes and water my houseplants and wear sunscreen? Am I not trying, in some way, to shape my life, to steer it on a certain course, based on the choices I make?

What I keep coming back to, over and over, are the small daily things: the things I sometimes tend (heh) to skip or gloss over, but which turn out to be important in the end. If you’ve been reading my work for more than five minutes, this is no surprise: I write about flowers, about the turning of the light in each season, about the way a smile or a text message or a chance encounter with a neighbor can illuminate a whole day. I believe the small things deserve our attention, whether it’s the marigold sprouts in my kitchen window or the rip in my denim shirt that needs mending.

I am always trying, too, to tend my relationships: to check in on my people, ask how they are, tell them I love them. To show up and help, as and when it’s needed, but also to simply be there: friendships, as my friend Lindsey noted long ago, are made of attention, and they need care, too.

As we slide further into summer, I’ll be asking myself: what is it I want to tend? What deserves my care and attention, and what can I let slide? More pointedly, what have I focused on that has only proved draining in the end? How can I (gently) reframe, and pull my attention back toward the things and people that matter most?

Happy June, friends, and happy weekend. I hope, in these early summer days, you’re tending what matters, and finding ways to nourish your own soul.  

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New on the blog: thoughts on running into neighbors, how to make decisions, and things (almost) too small to tell you.

Reading: Katie Arnold’s stunning Zen-and-running memoir, Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World. Kate Quinn’s fantastic upcoming Cold War novel, The Briar Club. Jacqueline Winspear’s farewell (sniff) to her protagonist, Maisie Dobbs. And this fascinating Harper’s Bazaar Q&A about the Black history - and future - of country music.

Listening/Watching: Birdsong, of course. Random (delightful) episodes of Somebody Feed Phil, on a friend’s blue couch in Atlanta. Peonies and roses, blooming all over the neighborhood. And the light on the water, during park yoga.

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