A year of neglect is all it takes, I now know, for a garden to lose its joy. Growth will continue, of course, Grow is what gardens do. Unchecked, unweeded, unpruned growth, however, is not the kind of beauty that gardeners aim for.

I had been looking forward to this summer, rejoicing in restored health, anticipating a summer of reclamation: joy in fresh veggies that I could once again harvest myself, pleasure in picking berries, and deep satisfaction in rejuvenating a run-wild perennial flower garden.

            That all happened, for sure, but so did a succession of unexpected losses.   

            The first was among the lilies. Decades ago, even before we turned our once boring lawn-only front yard into mostly garden, I had begun growing lilies. Previous owners had bequeathed me some tough, grow-everywhere tiger lilies. I added more lilies, plenty of them. One of my favorites was “Lilium – University of Saskatchewan,” bred for university’s centennial in 2007, proudly bearing the colors of white, gold and green. Altogether the lilies had formed a stand-up chorus around our bird bath in our front yard and a more subdued pink border in the shade of our back yard.  

 I vaguely remember hearing about an infestation of the red lily beetle, but paid little attention. This spring, a friend noticed the invading red lily beetles in my front yard lilies, and explained that to deal with the voracious little pests (also part of the natural world, I admit), I would have to find all the eggs and grubs and squish them. And find all the beetles, so adept at dropping to the ground upside-down and making themselves invisible. Applying poison was also an option but I’m not a fan of spreading chemicals to control whatever isn’t perfect or pleasant.

 In my mind, a scorched-earth policy seemed easier. I astonished myself with my quick decision to dig up absolutely all of the lilies, every single one of them with its bulb and any baby bulbs, bag them and toss them into the garbage. Sending them to the city compost facility would likely just spread the problem. Over the summer, I noted that some gardeners had been diligent enough to save their lilies. I had not been able to find the will to attempt it.  

I told myself that I had enjoyed their beauty for many years. Now it was time to say good-bye. The dirt was barely shaken off the spade before I was thinking about what I could plant to fill the newly opened spaces.

            A similarly impulsive purge of hollyhocks happened later. Those had been planted more recently, partly in memory of a friend and colleague, also a gardener, who determined that he would live long enough with his cancer to see one flowering of hollyhocks (they bloom only in their second year). There had been a time when I despised hollyhocks as the kind of thing that grew in back alleys and wherever householders were unwilling to put in much effort. They seemed untidy, even aggressive. Yet after seeing a thriving stand of black hollyhocks, I determined that I would grow a combination of pink and black hollyhocks alongside our back fence, so they could delight us as well as passing pedestrians. I thought they would be easy.

 They weren’t. New baby plants grew where I hadn’t wanted them; mature plants didn’t always bloom well for me. I became frustrated, especially when only the pink ones survived the winters. This spring, once again, the leaves turned yellowish and spotted, leaving the plants stunted, unproductive, and frankly ugly. Hollyhocks seem prone to a fungus (or rust) that’s not easy to get rid of. In a fit of pique and resentment, fuelled partly by my growing awareness that I was not going to catch up on gardening in one summer, the hollyhocks were condemned to follow the lilies into the garbage bag, every single one of them, wee ones and all. Another loss.

            A third loss for which I hold Mother Nature responsible is still partial. The final word has not yet been spoken regarding our sour cherry tree. Trees have come and gone in our yard before. Indeed, this Carmine Jewel sour cherry tree was relatively young, had only come into its fruiting prime in the last couple of years. This year’s crop was so abundant that we anticipated many ice cream pails full of fruit.

Then the grim discovery. Almost every cherry came with a wee white worm – the larvae of the cherry fruit fly. We had little choice but to pick every single cherry and collect every dropped cherry on the ground and send the lot to the city’s composting facility. The loss here—if we decide to keep the tree and see what next summer brings—consists of delicious cherry pies, cherry coffee cakes, muffins, scones, and excellent jam. That is a loss we can sustain without genuine hardship. Indeed, the loss of the lilies and the hollyhocks also caused no real hardship, but then gardening for us had not been about survival, but about beauty and taste, a different kind of necessity.

                        What I have been pondering during this summer of loss—and I am refusing to discuss at this point our greatest loss, that of Jasper, AB, which we thought of as our second home—is the integral relationship between loss and growth.

The trivial loss of lilies and hollyhocks and sour cherries has made way for new flowers and perhaps another tree or just more space for veggies. Anyone who gardens much at all knows that nothing stays static in a garden. It is the nature of things for some plants to reach their end stage while others begin anew. At least one neglected yard in our neighbourhood has made clear to us that unchecked growth just becomes a tangled mess; the lack of diligent pruning and adequate spacing simply means that the entire garden destroys itself.

 Just as Canadian National Parks officials are learning to listen to the wisdom of Indigenous peoples who have always understood that fires are necessary periodically to open up space for new growth, so the urban gardener needs to work with the natural processes of growth, death, and new growth. Without loss there is no growth.

Without loss, there is no growth.

            Can I take that natural lesson into my heart and face other, deeper, losses with greater equanimity? It seems hard, even somehow disloyal. Surely it can’t be right to insist that losing something might be necessary in order that something good might develop.

Yet the universe once again dropped the right book into my hands at the right time. I just “happened” to pick up Rabbi Wolpe’s Making Loss Matter from my library. In his foreword to the book, Mitch Albom writes, “all of life is a series of losses, which, if woven correctly from the sadness, can stitch a richer emotional fabric of our days.”

Wolpe explores that series of losses in a roughly chronological order: home, dreams, self, love, faith, and life – the sequence of losses that we’re likely to sustain if we live a reasonable life span. Through tender stories and gentle wisdom, he evokes the pain of loss and points out, repeatedly, that without such losses, growth is impossible. Loss is meaningful, because it opens doors to wiser dreams, deeper love, stronger faith, and richer life.

If I bear burdens
they begin to be remembered
as gifts, goods, a basket
of bread that hurts
my shoulders but closes me
in fragrance. I can
eat as I go.  (Denise Levertov, “Stepping Westward”)

            The losses of this summer aren’t over yet. Besides the annual replacement of summer’s fruit and flowers with the glorious colors of autumn’s many deaths, I will be choosing some particular endings. As our front yard becomes more of a shade garden with the steady expansion of our linden tree, the loss of sunshine space means the end of growing dahlias.

They gave me much joy in summers past. Now those tubers will go the way of all organic entities, although some may be spared as gifts to friends. Ditto for the calla lilies I grew for a few short years. The labor of lifting bulbs and tubers and storing them over winter will be replaced with the happy purchase of brilliant annuals next spring. My body does not have many more summers of full-scale gardening left. Therefore, I shall seek as many brilliant colors as possible, and love them as long as they last.