After

The new garden is complete!

From the gate, the wide path leads you into the garden. At the center, the path splits into several narrower paths. You're invited to turn toward a jumble of clay flower pots with different kinds of mint, which have spread out and naturalized on the ground. Or you can walk over and smell the honeysuckle, or you can make a couple of jogs and go on to the shed. The space feels bigger than it really is, a feeling that will get stronger when tall plants, like delphinium, grow up and blur the edges of the pathways.

We put some plants in the new beds right away, but we waited a few weeks before completely filling them.

Maybe we wanted to savor the pure potential of the new space.

Maybe we just don't hurry through projects like this, projects that take our little world and mold it into a new shape.

That takes some courage, to think the world will be better if we reshape it according to our own personal visions.

Who are we, after all, to say this corner of the world will be a better place if we shape it the way we think it should be?

Who are we to judge, what will make the world better? We aren't encouraged to think like that, so normally we don't consider how we can, or should, improve matters. As a result, inertia rules.

We hear the Sermon of Inertia so often that finally we just let Chandler and Joey and Phoebe do our exploring and experimenting for us. After all, they're professionals. It's permitted for them to judge.

Let's step back and take another look. Chandler and Joey are fictional characters, created by people who want us to buy stuff. On the other hand, you and I are real.

We are blessed, that we have the ability to step back and take another look. You and I have eyes to see and minds to imagine with, and we have hearts to feel passion about our personal corners of the world.

Best of all, we have hands to rebel against the rule of inertia.

If we left this garden alone, it would become a patch of poison oak. I don't need Ross, comically sputtering, to give me permission to resist that.

But once I open that door, I don't need permission, where will it all end? Who knows what I might feel empowered to do?

So who am I to judge? Nobody special. We're the same that way, you and I. Neither of us needs permission.

You know, Rachel wants us to buy some stuff at Pottery Barn today.

My real-life friend Maria told me that, if I can grow enough tomatoes and jalapenos this summer, she'll make enough of her amazing home-made salsa for both of us.

I've really got to get busy in the garden!

We don't even know what color this bud will explode into.

Pure potential.

But, anyway...

What do you want to do today?

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