What Gardening Taught Me About Writing

Weeds. Give them a spot of rain and they'll take over a garden if we let them. That's why I found myself on hands and knees recently, weeding, pruning, and watering the garden I planted this spring.

My garden isn't big, but size truly doesn't matter in this case. What matters is that my garden is the first plot of land I've had the time, energy and desire to tend since E's aneurysm rupture in July 2001.

Notable, too, is that fact that amidst the chaos of balancing work and family, I've managed to create a crazy quilt of living color--lavendar, columbine, fire-witch, black-eyed susans, peonies, roses, and more--outside my kitchen door.

And make a connection between gardening and writing.

Think about it. Weeding. Pruning. Trimming. Exchanging one plant for another in order to achieve the right balance of color. The hard work of gardening isn't in the planting, but in the daily work required for the plot to take shape.

Sounds very much like the hard work of revising creative, doesn't it?