Carpe Momentum

by Frances Temme 10.2023

I try to relax on my back patio on the last day of astronomical summer, but I spy a weed that has emerged between the bricks and bend over to uproot it before it takes a stronghold. A few of the dogwood leaves have gone red, the hostas are drooped and yellowed, and the wisteria that adorns my pergola has begun the slow dropping of its infinitesimal leaves, a process that will take until after Thanksgiving to complete. My garden is not at its best in late September—the vibrant greens of spring are dark, almost black; the perennials are peeled back from their blooming splendor to less than brilliant foliage; and the annuals have gone leggy.

Every year since I’ve had a garden (37 years in this one place), I’ve promised myself that I would enjoy and relish every single day in my garden. The gardeners and gardening writers I most admire pay daily homage to the creation that is partially theirs. My impatience for the next event proves my great flaw in terms of appreciating the little part--a mere 1/9th of an acre--of paradise that I have tried to craft. No sooner have the snowdrops blossomed, than I yearn for the bright purples of crocus, to be replaced by the vivid yellow trumpets of the daffodil, then on to the nuanced splendor of my palest pink tulips and the soft beauty of English bluebells, my favorite planting in my garden. For those of you who garden, you know the rotation in which the bulbs and the perennials and the bushes and the trees display their glory—and how brief and ephemeral that beauty is.

And every year, I promise myself I will savor every hour, every day, every week, every experience of my life, as much as I promise myself I will enjoy each individual day in the garden. I fulfill neither promise. I’m always looking forward to the next holiday, the next birthday, the next anniversary, the next dinner with family or friends, the next house project, the next trip, the next visit from my children or grandchildren. I’m not near as busy as when my children were young and my career endlessly demanding, but I still am restless if I’m not moving. For this, I blame my mother.

My mother was most confused by the story of Mary and Martha in the New Testament. Mary got all the credit for sitting and listening at Christ’s feet, while Martha bustled around in the kitchen: we were taught to believe that Martha was Mary’s inferior. My mother decried this story because she reasoned, logically and intuitively, that Christ (well, maybe not Christ) and his friends would have starved to death if Martha had assumed Mary’s posture. She preferred the holy women who worked, St. Frances of Rome and St. Frances Cabrini, to the purely mystic, St. Teresa of Avila and St. Therese Lisieux. I have taken my mother’s lesson to heart: keep busy.

I am almost incapable of sitting and enjoying my garden. On a constant lookout for weeds, dead blooms, straggling limbs, I fail to see the overall beauty and, instead, concentrate on attending to the flaws that keep the garden from being perfect in my eyes. Here’s the thing: I’m not a perfectionist. I don’t believe in the perfect. I appreciate the mess of newspapers and magazines and stacked books in a room: it means the people who live there read. I delight in the too brown edges and the overflow of juices in a homemade apple pie: it means a robot didn’t bake it. Shoes that are worn, armchair velvet that is faded, books whose spines are broken—these are the things I relish. So, it’s not the perfectionism—it’s the keeping busy that prevents me from sitting back and calmly appreciating the garden that has taken me 37 years to design and plant—and a garden that will never be perfect because of its very nature.

This past spring, we had to take down a magnolia that was sold as “dwarf” and towered over my yard. Now the southern sun beats directly onto my shade garden. I’m planting new sunny perennials this fall and hoping that I’ll still be here when they finally flush out. It takes at least three years for a perennial to look as if it really belongs in the landscape, but I don’t want to look that far ahead. I want to cherish the moment—to see the new plants as they struggle to find root in my clay soil and to wonder as they produce their first blooms, not to anticipate the fullness of three years’ growth.

I spent so much of my motherhood looking forward to the next phase, the next season, the next school year, that I’m pretty certain I missed out on countless experiences that were there to be enjoyed and savored. I kept busy—I kept my head down and plowed ahead. I oversaw homework, exposed my kids to music and reading and art, chauffeured them to sport practices and games and sleepovers and play dates. I cleaned, I laundered, I cooked, I gardened. I went to sleep every night exhausted. I was busy.

I scroll through my phone and see countless pictures of my grandchildren, feeling regret that I have so few pictures of my own children. I envy my children the astronomic number of photos of their children, courtesy of their smartphones. In my prehistoric time, one had to buy film, load a camera, pose the children, adjust the focus, remove the film while ensuring that it wasn’t being exposed, fill out an envelope with all manner of information, and finally mail it or drop it off at the local CVS for development. It took great effort and cost a good deal of money.

I’ve railed at Instagram and the incessant snapping that seems to occupy the generations below mine, but now I wonder if, in fact, taking the photo demands that one pause and appreciate whatever is worth appreciating. Maybe stopping to film helps the parent to register that particular moment more clearly, whether it’s a picture of an infant clutching her baby fairy, a toddler clumsily running for the first time, or a young soccer star, ignoring the game and admiring the trees that enclose the field. Last evening, my youngest granddaughter had her first encounter with pho. She balked at first, twisted a rice noodle around her finger, sucked it into her mouth, and smiled. That wonderful moment is recorded for her mother, lucky woman, and for my granddaughter to view someday, perhaps, with her own child. Making resolutions in the hope of achieving a new personal reality is one of the delusions of humanity. The ideal self and the actual self--I think I know who I am at my age, but I can still aspire. I hereby resolve to treasure every moment yet to be given to me. As a new season beckons, I renew my pledge to enjoy the moment, to appreciate this autumn in my garden, to treasure the present. We’ll see. The holidays are coming.