CityDiggity

A green space for urban gardeners

Got riddles? Gardens — even small-space ones — hold the answers

I’m an unabashed movie buff. And, one of my all-time favorites is Lawrence Kasdan’s “Grand Canyon,” built around the powerful story of two seemingly different men who meet under trying circumstances and wind up connecting as friends.

There is one scene where a third character, a Hollywood producer, intones “all of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.” Nicely put, right?

I think many of life’s riddles are answered in the garden, as well. And while I don’t usually pound the “garden as metaphor for life” drum, as I said in my last post I’m feeling a little Zen right now, so I’m going to indulge.

Today’s riddle: How do you cope when you’re beat and the number of hours needed to complete your ever-growing to-do list are in inverse correlation to the number of hours available?

Here is the answer (plucked from the garden), which I’m happy to say has been affirmed in my life more than once:

Occasionally, when you’re too tired to water, you’re blessed with rain.

Meaning, sometimes the planets align at exactly the right time, and an outside force intervenes to get you through the moment and lighten your load.

It’s at one of these times when you can just sit back and smell the roses — or, gaze upon your angelonia serena purple (pictured) at dusk.

[I’d love for you to share some of the riddles demystified in your garden through your comments!]

7 Comments»

  UrbanTravelGirl wrote @

Avis, I LOVE this post — even though, as you know, I live in a downtown Chicago condo with NO outdoor space (I do have a couple of windowsill basil plants, if that counts)! And I love the wisdom in “Occasionally, when you’re too tired to water, you’re blessed with rain.” As someone drowning in her own endless to-do list, I say, “Let it pour!!” šŸ™‚

  City Diggity wrote @

UTG, To paraphrase one of our favorite movie quotes: “We know one day the rain will come.” šŸ˜‰

  linda wrote @

Avis, I love this post too. There’s much to be learned from/in a garden. As for riddles, I’m not so good at concocting them, but I can say with confidence that for pretty much every riddle life hands me, answers are found by slowing down, breathing, and BEing in the garden. BEEing works too. šŸ˜‰

  City Diggity wrote @

Amen, to that Linda!

  riddles wrote @

Gardens can make people happy when they are sad and can also do a lot of things. I agree with you on this one keep up the good writing.

  Cheryl wrote @

Miss Avis. So I finally got here! And I ‘m loving it! Your blog is awesome and inspiring. I feel like I just walked into that blessed field of flowers in the movie “The Color Purple”! As I watch my pancies and kale grow (and pray the rabbits don’t eat them) this winter ……I’ll be looking for the riddle in it all. :-). Can’t wait for your next post.

  Wendy wrote @

I love it! I’m feeling so NOT zen right now but do have some zen moments, so I’ll have to think about the riddles later on. šŸ™‚


Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: