Sometimes Your Intentions Don't Take Off

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Without further ado, today’s pocket.

This is the time of year in the garden when I start thinking about the changes I want to make next year. I am keenly aware of what hasn’t turned out quite as I’d hoped or in some cases, like my attempt to grow a pumpkin patch, what has completely failed. My sunflowers are mammoths, and they are attracting so many winged friends, but I look at my garden sketch for this season, and sunflowers are nowhere to be found. The showstoppers in my garden are the one thing I didn’t plan for.

I love my sunflowers as much as the goldfinches do. However, I wish that I had been a little more intentional with my garden design plan. Yet, I am reminded that some of my best pumpkins grew in years when I didn’t plan for them at all, when they emerged to my surprise from the compost. Sometimes the greatest gifts of the garden are the ones you didn’t plan for. Further, there have been other times in my life where I have been extremely intentional, and life laughed at my intentions.

For instance, just last Sunday, the night before we were supposed to fly from Spokane to New York to see my parents and my brother and my niece and nephew, and an assortment of aunts and uncles and other relatives on Dan’s side of the family, I packed with the utmost intention. My mom loves sunflowers but can’t seem to grow them in her garden. I clearly don’t have that problem, so I picked my biggest and brightest blooms and then gathered the very best flowers from other spots around my wild urban garden. I added phlox, Agastache, and mint, so the bouquet would be pleasing to the olfactory senses, and I also threw in some pink and purple snapdragons, some coreopsis, and some oregano flowers, giving it a flair that only a bouquet made by me would have. My mom’s birthday was last month, and I knew she would be so delighted with this handpicked arrangement harvested with love.

In addition to the flowers, I baked my parents a tin of rosemary shortbread cookies and blackberry thumbprint shortbread cookies to give them a taste of the garden. For my nieces and nephews, I packed handmade origami boxes which held little stamps that could be imprinted on anything inside or outside, an idea I stole from Erin Boyle. This gift was weeks in the making as I had to order the special eraser stamps, the ink pads and also teach myself how to do origami. I have long suffered from overpacking, so I tried to limit the other items in my backpack. I knew a large tin of cookies on my back and a giant floral bouquet in my hands would make every inch of an already long and arduous journey, slightly longer and more arduous, but I had a feeling, it would be worth it.

Unfortunately, life doesn’t always take our feelings into consideration, nor does it care about our intentions because while I made it through security with all my goodies without so much as a glance from TSA, and while the flight attendants generously shared their small overhead bin with my flowers, and while the bags we voluntarily checked made it to New York, the five of us never did. We were stranded in Chicago with just the items on our back, which in my case, was a fifty-pound bag full of gifts, art supplies and books, one I wasn’t even sure I wanted to read. If the apocalypse ever arrives, I definitely will not survive it.

In the prose poem “Welcome to Holland” Emily Perl Kingsley writes about what it’s like to have a child with a disability. She says, “When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting. After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The flight attendant comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.” Emily continues to explain that you had no intention of traveling to Holland, and it is okay to grieve and mourn the things that will never come to be, “But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.”

And so we arrived in Chicago and not New York, and Chicago didn’t have my parents or my brother or my nieces and nephews, or a clean change of clothes, but Dan and the kids were with me and I laughed harder in the Oak Park hotel hallway than I had in a long time, a deep body laugh where my stomach vibrated with joy, and I could no longer form full sentences because while in one sense, having a pouch full of every colored pencil under the sun, but not a toothbrush, or a pair of underwear or decent walking shoes was absolutely terrible, in another, when I considered what the hotel concierge thought of me as I clung to some newly purchased Target items, including a pack of men’s underwear and asked for four toothbrushes, not five, because one of my family members would definitely survive the apocalypse, it was incredibly funny.

And I laughed again at the Lucky Duck Japanese restaurant where you could exchange menu items for items won from the arcade claw machines except you couldn’t because no one ever wins anything from a claw machine, though Seabass spent ten dollars of his own money trying and coming so close.

And one day Anna and I ran along the path around Lake Michigan, in shoes we borrowed from Dan and Seabass and socks from what we now referred to as the collective family stash. We ran towards the Chicago skyline, never quite reaching it, and when we grew tired, we stripped to our underwear and identified a place we thought we could swim without the waves crushing us against the rocks. Our swimming attire brought more laughter as did our decision to walk a few more feet so as not to traumatize the Christian youth group that was about to picnic, but we found a spot, and the water was perfect, and we never wanted to leave the place we weren’t supposed to be to begin with.

And I can keep thinking, and I do keep thinking if I’m being really honest, about why the pumpkins didn’t pan out or why the first and second plane never took off, or how it feels like sometimes we spend so much energy on things that never come to fruition, or I can sit in the sun among my golden gods and make a plan for a fall garden knowing that many of those plans won’t come to be, but some will and they will be beautiful, and other just as beautiful things that were never intended, like goldfinches, pygmy nuthatches, and tiny baby robins with speckled breasts, will find their way to me as well.

This Week in the Garden

I wasn’t supposed to be in the garden this week, but I am grateful for it. I’m harvesting blackberries by the bucketful this year. I see lots of jam, ice cream and pies in the future. The basil is happy, and I’ve started harvesting the kale. I’m eagerly awaiting the ripening of the first tomato. The sunflowers are keeping things bright, the first hibiscus has bloomed, the echinacea is saying hello, and lots of things are just about to…There seem to be more birds than ever before. I might start keeping track of the sightings. I think the three tiny water fountains and making sure they are always fully stocked, helps with this. I also think they appreciate the many safe places to perch. Cats can’t climb sunflowers.

I would love to continue this conversation in the comments. What’s growing in your garden? Do you have a travel or life story that worked out differently than planned? What book is on your bedside table?

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