Peace and Beauty Takes Work

Pinebarren Frostweed
Greeneyes


Pine Lily
I have a good friend of mine that meets conflict by stating that all she wants is peace and beauty. She has no time for anything else, but in landscapes as well as in relationships, we can't have peace and beauty without putting in a great deal of work. Landscapes don't happen by divine accident. Beauty doesn't come without forethought. Peace doesn't come until after we've put in a great deal of work.
All of us find our own beauty in the things we surround ourselves with. Aesthetics is in the eye of the beholder and few of us are willing to keep a landscape devoid of the beauty we seek. It has never been my intention to denigrate someone's sense of beauty. As my landscape develops, I spend more time in it as it brings me joy to see flowers opening and pollinators visiting them. Each is beautiful to me and I could care less if my neighbors also find it beautiful or if they consider it an eyesore to the sea of mowed lawns that they maintain.
Peace is what I find from the beauty I've helped to create, but it has not come "peacefully."  It has taken work to find peace; killing the procession of weedy plants that emerge from my now-exposed soil, watering tiny seedlings when the rains have not come, searching out sources for the plants I've spent an inordinate amount of time planning for.  Without this, my landscape would collapse into a sea of everything and anything - and most of those would not be among the choices I would make to achieve the goals that I have set. Peace takes work. We work six days a week to rest on the seventh...
Some in the native plant and pollinator movements would argue that landscapes like mine take less time and attention than landscapes of the more-formal kind. They are wrong. I do not fertilize or irrigate the small(er) amount of lawn that remains around my home and it takes me about 30 minutes each week during the rainy season to mow it. There are few things easier than this. My developing wildflower meadow, my two wetlands, and my developing deciduous woodlands require daily attention right now. Every day, I remove seedlings of my lawn weeds that have a seed bank in my planting areas. I cannot let them get big enough to flower and set more seed and in this summer weather they develop quickly. After all, they are weeds for a reason.
Beauty comes from what we plant - from a conscious planting plan and a decision as to what will stay and what will not. Peace comes from the success we have in creating that beauty and in knowing that we've accomplished something significant.  This requires us to work towards those ends. Most of us find that we enjoy that work, however.
The work towards the peace and beauty we seek in our landscapes should be incremental. Too often, we want everything right now - like a child in a toy store, it is difficult to curb our enthusiasm for everything we see on the shelves and even more difficult to choose which of those things we wish to take home.  I often find myself struggling to find room for just a few more plant species or trying to create conditions for something that really shouldn't do well in my part of the world and under the conditions I am forced to live with here. There are simply some beautiful plants that I refuse to add. They will just not be right for what I have planned here. They are right for somewhere else.
I also have not bitten off more than I can chew. I hope someday to expand on the areas where I have ripped out the lawn and replaced it with native plants, but I do not have the time or resources right now to do more than I have. I am effectively managing the areas I have planted. I am mowing the remainder. That is ok......... My landscape is making a difference as it is. I often wonder whether it would make twice as much difference if it were twice as large - I think not.
I am satisfied for now, managing my planting areas and watching them develop. With this comes the peace and the beauty that I find solace in in this world of otherwise upheaval.

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