Our Garden
I’m not sure if this is the way it works for everyone, but the major factor in our purchasing this house, our first home, was its potential. We could see through the hideous carpets, the layers of wallpaper, and the guardian angel switchplates into what it could be. The place where this potential was most evident, however, was not inside the house, but outside in the gardens. When we first viewed the house, it was an overcast spring day. One of the sellers of the home was in the garden cleaning the leaves off of the flower beds, uncovering the beds to let the sunshine do its work. Everything was still brown and wet, but we could see that in a couple of months most of the backyard would be taken up with blooming trees, bushes, and flowers. We could envision the life that would spring from the mud.
The process of buying, starting to fix, and moving into the house took us to the end of June. By then a few things became very apparent about the garden. The first, and most exciting thing, was that over the years there had been a great variety of plants that had been carefully looked after. Tulips, daffodils, lily of the valley, dahlias, phlox, daisies, and, of course, roses all come up under the swaying willow and oak branches. The yard is enclosed by evergreens, maples, a chestnut, yews, and a beautiful large Japanese cherry tree that positively explodes with colour in the spring. There is so much life, so much variety and vitality enclosed in our space. The second thing we learned was that it had been quite some time since the gardener who had nurtured that life had been able to care for it. ‘Goutweed’ soon became a curse that we spat whenever any care for the gardens was attempted. As far as weeds go, goutweed is a fairly attractive one. It will happily fill your garden with lush green leaves. It spreads fast, it is incredibly hardy, and elimination of it is nearly impossible since it will sprout from any piece of root that is left in the ground. And you don’t want to forget your gloves when trying to dig it up because it can irritate your hands and skin. It quickly became clear how much work revealing the potential of the garden would really be.
Our first summer, because we had such a late start on the garden, was primarily filled with observation and planning. We wandered around, noting new developments. My wife searched online for plants that we didn’t recognize immediately, or how to care for things that we did. We drew a map, noting where things were as they came up. We were visualizing on paper our dreams for the garden. In our minds we could see the future. It mainly consisted of laying in a hammock under the willow tree, sipping iced tea with a light breeze keeping the mosquitoes away. Ah, how glorious it would be.
This past spring, when the weather warmed up unseasonably early, I was excited to get out and working with the earth. Winter had been rough. It was mild, with only a couple of big storms. For me, this makes winter harder to get through, not easier. I love big blizzards and a wind-chill of thirty below. With winters like that you have something to overcome, something to run your resolve against. People come together, helping strangers out of snowbanks or offering rides on the coldest days. Last winter though was just dark, slightly uncomfortably cold, and muddy. Mostly dark. So when the crocuses started to blossom, I was more than ready to get my hands in the earth. The warm spring sun coming a couple of weeks early was like a sign that Nature was smiling on our plans for reshaping the garden.
I started by trying to erase winter’s remains. I removed the branches that had been broken off in winter winds. Then I raked the leaves off of the flower beds, filling our compost bins many times over. Then, on hands and knees, I inched around the beds, cutting sod from the edges with a trowel. This was to clearly demarcate the line between lawn and garden. It felt like I was tracing the same lines that we had drawn on paper the year before. A sketch of the outline to be coloured in as the flowers grew. Then I undertook some larger swipes at change. I dug up a section of flower bed so that we could plant sunflowers. I prepared and seeded with grass a large section under the willow tree to get ready for the hammock later in the summer. There is real satisfaction to be had in getting your hands dirty. I love the smell of dirt on my hands and clothes, the slight tightness of muscles being used in new ways, and the creative potential that gardening brings with it. As gardener, you become an agent in a process of change, with Beauty as a result.
Thinking about the process of gardening makes me think about the notion of process in general. How does anything come to be? Aristotle, who is much better at this type of discussion than I am, defines four causes. They are the material cause, the formal cause, the efficient cause, and the final cause. The material cause is fairly straight forward. It is the base matter that something is made from. For a chair, the material cause is wood. For a garden, it is soil, seeds, water, and sun. The formal cause is the pattern or design that exists before a thing is made. For our garden this is that plan that we drew, laying out where the different plant varieties were to go. The efficient cause of a garden is the gardener, the force that moves the raw matter from its state of potentiality into accordance with the design laid out by the formal cause. I think acting as an efficient cause is what makes me enjoy gardening. Most of the formal designing is done by my wife. She can see better what plants will look better near one another. I enjoy the digging, the doing. The final cause is the end result. The thing after it has moved from potentiality to actuality. 
Of course, when one of the various causes is missing, then the whole process starts to come apart. This is what quickly happened as summer continued. I, as the efficient cause, became busier with other pursuits and gardening got less and less time devoted to it. Then we were out of province for a couple of weeks. By the time we got back the goutweed had taken full advantage of its freedom and was multiplying rapidly. It had clearly staked its claim and was not to be tackled this season.
My failing as an efficient cause, and the weeds running wild brings me to a fuller explanation of the fourth cause that Aristotle outlines. The final cause is the end that all the other causes are aimed toward. In the process of a building a chair, the final cause is the act of sitting. The final cause is the test to see if something has really moved from being potential to being something actual. In gardening, our final cause is to have a lush space that is inviting and relaxing both for us and anyone who visits. It is by holding this final cause in sight that I keep from being disappointed in not getting more work done in the garden this summer. I feel that this goal has been achieved even though the formal attributes went a bit off track. One of the things that I did get done was to create a grassed sitting area under our willow tree. We now can hang a hammock swing there and sit in the midst of our flowers, reading in the sunshine. Our potential haven has become an actual one. This achievement of the final cause makes any flaws in the others less important. It doesn’t matter if the material for a chair is wood or metal, as long as you get to sit. It doesn’t matter if there are some weeds in the gardens, as long as you enjoy the flowers that do grow.