Lessons from the garden
plus a smartphone middle ground, getting paid, and food combos you need to know
Hi, I’m Katie, a writer and podcaster and I believe that literature, art, beauty, theology, and wonder are worth our time and attention. This essay is free for you to read, but took time and research to write - consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support the work I do.
The woman who lived in our house before us was a master gardener. Like a great architect, she had sheets of drafting paper and detailed notes in the basement. This was her vision, her design, and it was beautiful. Largely inspired by Japanese zen gardens, the areas around the house overflowed with azaleas, hinoki cypress, witch hazel, crocuses, speedwells, geraniums, peonies, cedar, Lenten roses, striped squill, weeping forsythia, and Chinese holly. The first few springs it was a wondrous discovery - what would bloom next and where? But the wonder was outpaced by a sort of frantic panic. The weeds! The thistle! It was overflowing! We were not retired (as the former owner was) nor did we have a gardener (which she also had).
Actually, at the time we were both working outside of the house and we both had awfully brown thumbs in this arena. When we lived in the city there was literally one patch of sidewalk in front of our townhouse that was our responsibility. The weeds wedged their way in the cracks and sprouted rebelliously in the ashy concrete. I side stepped the growing weeds as I walked out the door. The city contacted us. ‘Please clean up your sidewalk or you will be fined.’
We were fined.
It was a perpetual problem, living in our own heads - lots of discussion and debate and parties and abstraction - but here were giant weeds taking over our sidewalk and we couldn’t be bothered. So when we came upon our dream farm, we were all enthusiasm. We love the outdoors! We love gardens! No problem!
Reader, you can imagine the chaos that would ensue over the next few years. ‘But you grew up on a farm!’ people will say. ‘Was this really such a surprise?’ Yes and no. I moved to a small horse farm when I was eleven years old (after boarding our horses at a nearby stable up to that point). I spent summers on ponies and in the stream and I do feel comfortable with animals and I do love early mornings and the smell of hay and all those good things. But this garden… That was something else. This was a work of art and more than that - it was someone else’s work of art! It was beautiful, but it wasn’t mine, and I felt no responsibility for it. I didn’t want it.
I hate to tell you but many plants did not survive our initial foibles. Others have proven immensely hardy and stubborn, blooming wildly beautiful despite our ignorance. We learn more each year but by July we almost always lose our initial enthusiasm. The thistle wins again!
But last summer, when this garden had quite literally thrown us into despair (I’m not kidding we considered moving because of the expense and overwhelm of the garden and it just seemed too awful to pull it all up), I thought about the sort of gardens I liked. I thought of those English country gardens, so wild and full of color you hardly know where to look. The Japanese gardens are all order and stillness and that isn’t us. I thought of the flowers I loved best around our home - the brilliant and wild looking forsythia, the bluebells along the steps. I wanted more of that.
Not wanting to resort to Roundup, there is only so much we can do for the thistle (and the fact that our neighbor’s field is full of it and blows in our direction means it’s a losing battle in any case). So what to do? There’s no escaping it - we will have to lay a lot of weed cloth. We will need to weed. A lot.
But late last autumn when flower buds seemed impossible and so far off, we also scattered wildflower seeds amidst the garden beds. I watched my then two year old toss her seeds in the air, a joyful promise of Spring. Maybe there would be thistle, but among them there would be overflowing flowers, the kind that bunch all together and drown your eyes in color. Because that is our kind of garden. Never perfectly weeded or neat - but tumbling and wild and joyful. That was the idea anyway.
The birds watched as we scattered our seeds, all too eager to swoop in. And swoop in they did. Entire patches seem to have failed to take root, and we had all but despaired over the experiment, having seen nary a wildflower by mid-May. But today we saw our first wildflower blooming, and as we weeded and looking amongst the beds, we saw more and more. Some of the flowers are growing, they are blooming! And they stand there rooted amongst the roses and the speedwells and the dandelions and the thistle, a promise of imperfect color.
There’s some sort of allegory in here. Something about making things your own… how what is beautiful in your life may look different than someone else’s. Maybe you’re a zen garden type or maybe you’re a messy cottage garden of wildflowers. Don’t take care of the wrong garden, or feel trapped in it.
But there’s something also about the persistence of beauty and how important it is to work for it. I feel for us those early years on the farm - we were very young and very ignorant and had been given beautiful opportunities beyond our skill and awareness. We were also not very hard workers, not in the hands in the dirt, sweat on the brow way. Things had come too easy for us and we didn’t understand the day-in-day-out care that the things that matter really require of you.
Now, our three year old loves to weed, to look for worms, to gather flowers for bouquets. She loves the garden quite naturally, but she also sees every single day, that it requires constant care.
I also am so grateful for the opportunities we now have to be home so much, with our children, with all this work on the farm. It was impossible to care for land and animals and gardens driving down a highway everyday. I know this isn’t a work situation accessible to everyone so it isn’t proposed as a solution but simply as an observation that we all do better when we are in the homes we care for (and not constantly living outside of them).
But most importantly, I think of Roger Scruton who said that Beauty is a consolation and I think that it is a worthwhile life, a good life, to care for beautiful things. This is not an indulgence or an extravagance.
This is worth our time. This is worth our attention.
Other thoughts…
On a smartphone middle ground
The more you simplify the more you want to simplify. We don’t have a TV anymore. It’s been nearly a year since I signed onto either Instagram or Facebook. But I still have been trying to figure out the role of the online world in my life. Sometimes I’m quite keen on it, other times I’m ready to buy a dumb phone and live off the grid.
But for all my griping, I do like my smartphone. I like maps. I like my camera. I love my podcasts and my music. WhatsApp memos throughout the day are fun and energizing. Having email when doing remote recording work is incredibly useful.
But I also want to stop feeling like the phone is a limb - something I can’t leave the house with, even to walk the dogs. “But you need to be reachable!” the responsible voice rings in my head. There are a handful of people for whom me or my husband may be the first emergency contact. We also have animals (who have escaped before!) and we need our neighbors to be able to call us if they see a chubby pony heading down the lane. So what to do?
Enter the flip phone. You remember them! And you can still buy them. I just got mine from Verizon, my cell carrier. I bought the phone outright for seventy dollars and added a line for an extra thirty dollars a month. Now we have a family ‘landline.’ Having shared our number with necessary contacts we can safely turn off our phones for the weekend, or go out on a hike, or on vacation, or simply after five pm, and still be reachable for genuine emergencies.
The habitual checking while trying to unwind and read, the need to reply to that non-urgent text right this minute, the ‘let me just look up one thing on Google’ rabbit hole one hour later… That can end.
Anyway, it’s still new to us but it’s been working great so far and I share it as a nice middle ground option for people who aren’t ready to go all in on the dumb phone but still want to the freedom to disconnect. The little bit of extra expense a month is more than worth it to us.
On getting paid on Substack
In my disconnected life these days I’ve also really been enjoying living in my real physical embodied place, amongst neighbors and friends and family. It doesn’t mean I don’t love to podcast or write but I have felt less eager to spend precious free time in front of a screen. It’s just a season, I know. There are other seasons when my brain lights up at the thought of cranking out essays and engaging in this space. I’m not in that place right now. As a result, I see my paid subscribers dip and dip. I completely understand this and don’t take it personally, You see that reminder pop up for the monthly charge and think wait have I even heard from that person lately? and you decide it’s not worth it for the moment. Makes sense!
But I do also think there’s a little bit of confusion on Substack about what paid subscribers are paying for. I have very little ‘paid only content’ - though I always get a few new paid subscribers when I share something that is behind a paywall. I assume most people who upgrade are thinking of it like a tip jar, which honestly makes more sense to me. But also makes it all a bit more tenuous.
In any case, I’ve completely shifted my thinking about Born of Wonder to ‘passion project only.’ When I started a Substack and actually started making some money on this work, I got a little confused about it all. Should I be hustling more? What is this about? But I realized quite quickly this had to be for me - because it is life giving and I love it and I enjoy writing and podcasting and connecting with like-minded people. When it becomes monetarily motivated, for me, it got messy and confusing. I’m grateful to have outside paid work that gives me clarity about what this particular project is. I want to do it - it’s fun!
That being said, paid subscribers are incredibly validating, motivating, and important - you are very, very appreciated!!
Food combinations you should try
We needed a dose of random. And these are really good, just trust me -
Sour cream and Icelandic sea salt on scrambled eggs.
Old Bay Seasoning on pizza (I’m from Maryland, hon).
Well that’s all!
This may end up subbing in as my ‘monthly musings’ for May, but we’ll see. It’s a whirlwind next few weeks and I’m feeling a little over my head, ready to dig into all that rich soil in my messy, lovely, embodied life - flowers and weeds and all.
cheers to beauty, undeserved, pure gift that it is.
x Katie
I’m taking a couple weeks break from the podcast but stay tuned when I come back for a lovely interview I did with poet and Substacker
- in the meantime, check out her work at .And while I have you here…
Come to Ireland with me and Christy Isinger in October 2024! Our Lady of Knock, sheepherding demonstrations, traditional music, High Tea at a castle, St. Patrick’s Holy Mountain, the Rock of Cashel, ancient monasteries, a literary pub crawl… and most importantly, kindred spirits ready to pray, wonder, laugh, and learn together. Let’s buck the trend and do some real-world non-online life adventuring together.
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Oh I loved reading about the garden joys and struggles. I thought I was the only one being victimized by thistle! We bought a house on 1.5 acres in the dead of winter, and I was consumed with idyllic suburban homesteading dreams. It wasn’t until the snow melted that we realized the outside was a bit of a nightmare. Every outdoor structure on the property was rotten and it felt like we purchased a thistle farm. After two years of hard work and several dumpster rentals, it finally feels like we’re making good progress. I will admit to already feeling overwhelmed by the weeds this year. We got hit hard with Covid/strep and losing a few weeks of garden time means the weeds have gotten a good head start. I have tried garden strength vinegar and cutting the thistle at the plant base (I read pulling actually helps them proliferate 🫣) but if you have any other tips, I’d love to hear!
That was a great idea you had about the flip phone. It’s so interesting to think about the time before cell phones and how they are so much a part of everyone’s life now.