Seven years ago, we moved into a house with a very established, very mature garden.
This is the sort of phrase real estate agents say in a tone meant to suggest English manor, filtered sunlight, bees moving lazily through lavender, perhaps a woman in linen carrying secateurs and thinking vague but noble thoughts.
In reality, it meant we had inherited a garden that was here to stay.
There were some lovely things, to be sure. Mature trees. Good bones. A sense that someone, at some point, had cared deeply and possibly owned better pruning tools than I did. But the garden also exploded with colour in a way that did not entirely align with my own quiet, bossy sensibilities.
I like green and white.
I like hydrangeas. Ferns. Hostas. Hellebores. Things that suggest restraint, shadow, structure, and perhaps a woman who owns many cream sweaters.
This garden had other ideas.
It had purples. Pinks. Corals. Reds. Yellows. Colours arriving at full volume with no apparent concern for the fact that I was trying to cultivate something closer to Nancy Meyers meets damp Pacific Northwest.
· · ·
And then there were the rhododendrons.
The rhododendrons were, for many years, the bane of my existence.
There were so many of them. Big, old, hulking things. Great leafy beasts planted all over the property as though a previous owner had once joined a rhododendron society.
They required work. They dropped leaves constantly. They produced sticky flowers that had to be deadheaded or else the entire shrub began to look like it had hosted a very sad wedding reception. They loomed. They shed. They sulked. They took up space.
And they clashed with everything I thought I wanted.
I don't mind gardening. In fact, I like gardening when I like the outcome. I like the satisfaction of clearing a bed, cutting things back, making order from botanical chaos. I like the moment after the work is done.
But here I was, year after year, tending to a dozen large rhododendrons, doing the work, managing the mess, and not particularly enjoying the fruits of all that labour.
They were not my thing.
I was sure of this.
· · ·
And then, this year, something changed.
I don't know whether the rhododendrons were different, or whether I was.
This is, increasingly, the question.
But I started noticing them.
Not just seeing them, which I had been doing for seven years with the mild irritation one reserves for wet towels left on the floor, but noticing them.
The white ones came first.
Then the purples.
Then the bright pinks.
Then the corals and the yellows.
And finally, the reds.
They had been timed, whether by nature, planning, or some long-ago gardener who knew exactly what they were doing, so that one part of the garden was always in bloom while another was just getting ready to take over. Just as one shrub faded, another one arrived, entirely convinced it was the main event.
· · ·
And this year, instead of muttering about deadheading, I found myself standing at the kitchen window saying things like:
"Are the purples more purple this year?"
"These are stunning."
"Have you noticed these flowers?"
"Look at this one."
"I don't remember it having this many blooms."
"Look how many flowers there are on that thing."
That thing.
The thing, apparently, being a magnificent mature rhododendron with sweet, delicate, light violet flowers, each bloom made up of a dozen smaller flowers, arranged with a kind of abundance that felt almost theatrical.
There I was, morning after morning, coffee in hand, standing at the kitchen window like a woman in a BBC gardening program, looking out at the very shrubs I had once considered evidence of aesthetic misfortune.
And I was amazed.
Not mildly appreciative. Not resigned. Amazed.
The thing I had resisted had been magnificent the whole time.
Annoying, yes. Sticky, absolutely. High-maintenance, without question. But also magnificent.
· · ·
This is one of the stranger humiliations of midlife, I think. The slow realization that some of the things we dismissed may simply have required more time, more context, or a slightly less tyrannical vision of what beauty was supposed to look like.
I had wanted the garden to become mine.
Quiet. Restrained. Green and white.
But the garden, inconveniently, already was itself.
It was not trying to become my Pinterest board. It was not auditioning for a lifestyle spread. It was a mature garden, planted in layers, with colour arriving in waves. It had rhythm. It had timing. It had drama. It had, frankly, more confidence than I did.
And perhaps that is why it annoyed me.
There is something deeply irritating about a thing that refuses to be edited.
The rhododendrons did not care that I preferred hydrangeas. They did not care that their corals and reds made me nervous. They did not care that their flowers were sticky or that their leaves required ongoing attention.
They just bloomed.
Fully. Loudly. Briefly. Unapologetically.
And then they made a mess.
· · ·
Which, now that I think about it, may be the most honest life cycle there is.
There are seasons when we are the tidy green structure in the background. There are seasons when we are the bloom. There are seasons when we are the mess that follows. And there are seasons when someone is standing nearby with pruners, sighing deeply and wondering why we require so much work.
But this year, the work bothered me less.
Maybe because I could finally see what it was in service of.
Maybe because I have softened.
Maybe because after seven years in a house, a garden stops feeling like something you inherited and starts feeling like something you are in relationship with. You stop seeing only what you would have chosen and start noticing what has chosen to stay.
There is a kind of intimacy in that.
The old shrubs. The awkward corners. The plants you would never have bought but now defend with surprising passion. The ridiculous bloom you once found garish that suddenly, in the right evening light, looks less like a mistake and more like a miracle.
· · ·
This is what time does, I suppose.
It changes the garden.
It changes the gardener.
It changes the way we understand colour.
Seven years ago, I thought the rhododendrons were too much.
This year, I wondered whether perhaps I had been too little.
Too narrow. Too certain. Too committed to the idea that beauty had to arrive in the palette I had approved in advance.
· · ·
There they were, all along, these great big blooming mature things, putting on their annual show whether I appreciated it or not.
And this year I did.
I stood at the kitchen window and admired them.
The purple ones. The pink ones. The corals. Even, heaven help me, the reds.
I still prefer green and white.
Let's not get carried away.
But I have made room for the rhododendrons.
Or perhaps, more accurately, they waited me out.
~ Danielle
The Midlife Syllabus
Lesson #25
Sometimes the thing you thought was too much turns out to be exactly the thing that teaches you how much more beauty you can stand.
Beauty, Grace & Daily Artistry
A small, imperfect pleasure:
This week's beauty is the kitchen window as viewing platform.
I have spent an embarrassing amount of time standing there with my coffee, admiring shrubs I spent years resenting.
There is probably a lesson in this.
There is also probably deadheading to do.
What I'm Reading, Watching, or Listening to
Reading
The Last Chairlift.
If you feel the way I do about vintage John Irving, you will love this too.
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