Hawthorn Hill Journal by Richard deRosa

Midwinter Musings on Simplification

It is seed ordering time. Come spring, we are making some significant changes up here on the hill. Our seed order will be smaller than usual. We cut back to one vegetable garden last year, using one strictly for flowers. The plan is to return the lower garden to its original grassy state, and move the blueberry bushes to the fence along the upper garden. If we stick to our guns, half of the upper garden will host vegetables, the other half cutting flowers. We will call on outside help to clear out the lower garden, as well as several perennial beds. Aging not only takes its toll on a body’s capacity for heavy duty chores—the mind also offers unsubtle hints that perhaps it is time to ease up. Tylenol does not work as well as it used to, and the mind clearly says there are other, less arduous, tasks to tackle. The surprise, at least to me, is my willingness to succumb.

As long as we are here, we will garden. We just need to pare down to what is more manageable. We spent so many years adding gardens that taking them out does leave a bit of a bitter taste. But life is all about change, about waxing and waning, about getting through time in ways a bit different but equally appealing in their own right.

When we first tilled the land 20 years ago, it never occurred to us that there may come a day when we would ever turn the place over to someone else. The idea behind removing gardens is to reduce the amount of physical labor required to keep the place in tip-top shape. It is a way of perhaps prolonging the inevitable.