The Gentle Garden

January 1, 2026

Here in the Pacific Northwest, where moss considers itself an interior design choice and the clouds have strong opinions about lingering, I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. Never have, never will.

Resolutions feel a bit like promising you’ll never again track mud into the house while wearing boots that were made for mud. I admire the optimism. I just know myself better than that.

Instead, I pick a word of the year, something to hold gently in my pocket, like a smooth stone found on a familiar trail.

Last year’s word was grace.

Not the kind you offer easily to others (that part I’ve got down), but the kind you extend inward. Grace for missed deadlines, for tired evenings, for doing your best when your best looks suspiciously like a book, a fire, and an early bedtime. How did I do? Better. Not perfect. Still very much a work in progress. Turns out receiving grace is harder than giving it, especially when you’ve spent a lifetime believing productivity is a moral virtue.

As I’ve been contemplating the year ahead, another word keeps tapping me on the shoulder.

Slow.

I know. A strange choice. Possibly even suspicious.

But I feel like I’ve spent the last 21 years of life and parenting running. I sprint from one thing to the next event to the next meeting to the next…… Anyone who has ever shared a meal with us will note that we eat like it’s an Olympic sport: speed rounds, minimal conversation, impressive fork-to-mouth efficiency. Not because we’re starving, but because somewhere in the background, there’s always a Zoom meeting, a board meeting, a performance, or something that must be done right now.

Running a marathon for 21 years is… well… exhausting.

Gerald the garden gnome has been tsk-ing at me about this for years. He stands there, arms crossed, judging my pace. Mildred, ever the picture of wisdom, just adjusts her glasses and offers a knowing smile while crocheting yet another doily, as if to say, You’ll figure it out eventually, dear.

Slow sounds easy. It is not.

It might be my most challenging word yet because it requires adjusting the internal clock, and neither the builder nor I are particularly good at that. We are people who like plans, efficiency, and forward motion. Slow asks something different.

What might it look like?

Cooking complicated meals that require… time.
Making plans with my people that aren’t followed by, “but we have to leave by…”
Sitting in companionship without urgency.
Taking up a hobby that can’t be finished in minutes, but unfolds over months. It looks like 2026 will be about…..sewing.

I already do this with gardening, watching, waiting, trusting the quiet work beneath the soil, but literally nowhere else in my life.

Slow isn’t about stopping. It’s about not rushing past the moments that are actually the point.

So, no resolutions for me. No lists taped to the fridge. Just one small word, doing big work.

What about you?
Do you make New Year’s resolutions, or do you have another way of stepping into a New Year?
What are you hoping to grow, slowly or otherwise, this year?

October 17th, 2025

The EMPTY Nest (Or Maybe Not So Empty After All)

A reflection from The Gardener

My youngest just turned 18.

This fall is filled with college visits and so many lasts. The last marching band performance, the last first day of school photo, the last time I fill out a permission slip. With it comes the thought that makes parents everywhere wince just a little: this time next year, the Builder and I will officially be “empty nesters.”

Well, sort of. Our big kiddo is still at home, finishing up college, quietly adulting in a way that makes me proud and slightly nostalgic. My head knows this is how it’s supposed to go – healthy birds fly the nest. That was always the goal. But that doesn’t make the transition any easier.

For 21 years, our calendar has revolved around them. It’s been packed with soccer practices, art lessons, and camping trips. We’ve coached sports we had no business coaching, PTA’d our way through science fairs, hauled band equipment up hills and down stadium bleachers in the name of parenting.

And now, the thought of an empty nest doesn’t just mean kids flying off to new adventures. It means a big, empty calendar where once there was color-coded chaos and stacked activities that we divided and conquered.

So, I’ve decided to spend this last year in emotional preparation for what comes next. I’m calling it my year of introspection.

Who will I become next?

At first, I thought that I would pick up a new hobby or two. I can plan more weekends away with the Builder, perhaps. I can mark weekends on the calendar and plan a few adventures to places we’ve always said we’d visit “someday.” But as I’ve sat with the idea, I think we miss something important in all this empty nest talk:

We don’t have to give everything up. We don’t have to become… empty.

We get to choose what we want to keep.

What were the things that truly stuck? The moments that filled me with joy, purpose, and laughter? The Builder and I have always been people of community and service, and I refuse to give up those things and the people who matter. I still want to invest in the next generation. I still have the energy (and the good hiking boots) to haul a tent through the woods and march over wet bridges and fallen logs. I still get to show up, not because I have to, but because I want to.

Maybe this isn’t an ending at all, but just a new kind of beginning.

Maybe instead of “empty nest,” we call it something else:
The Next Chapter Nest.
The Becoming Years.
The ReBloom Phase.
The Rediscovery Era.

Yes, this new season will bring more time for dreams that have been waiting patiently in the wings – like this very gardening blog full of whimsical statuary and music reviews. It has been years since I had energy for something that has absolutely no purpose. Maybe I’ll finally learn to play Betty the Banjo (a Mother’s Day present that hangs on the wall after a few sad attempts went nowhere). Maybe I’ll just keep doing the things that matter, whether or not my kids are in them anymore.

Because like perennials, we get to cut back, compost, and grow again.

To bloom again.
To give joy again.
To be full again.

Because this season of life- whatever we call it –
won’t be empty.

A Year of the Chaos Garden
from Christy, the Gardener

It always starts the same way. A whisper in the algorithm. A hashtag too clever to ignore. A reel of sun-dappled pollinator patches overlaid with ukulele music. A slideshow of overgrown beds, seeds strewn with abandon.

Chaos Gardening.

The words alone give me pause, at once disorienting and seductive. It sounds less like a gardening method and more like a spiritual reckoning. A cry for help in mulch and bloom. A therapy session conducted by calendula, cosmos, and volunteer kale. A return to wildness. A rebuttal to spreadsheets, schedules, and side hustles. It’s attractive.

I sit with it for a while. Not in the garden, too many weeds I’m too tired to pull, but inside, at the breakfast table, sipping the English Breakfast I’ve reheated twice and still managed to forget about.

Should I do it? Could I?

I’ve followed the social media trends before.

There’s the pizza-making summer of 2020. The pandemic gardening craze, when raised beds were as essential as toilet paper, and people compared tomato growth like they once compared gas mileage. I even started a YouTube channel for gardening. Then I got bored.

And now: Chaos Gardening.

I click through forums and quirky blog posts. The gist is simple: skip the plan. Toss all your leftover seeds, expired, unlabeled, the mystery ones inherited from your father, into one glorious garden bed. Maybe mix them in a bowl first. Scatter them like confetti, like hope. Water and wait. See what shows up. Run through the field in a linen dress and clogs and give back to Mother Earth.

Some do it for pollinators. Some for beauty. Some just need a win that doesn’t require measuring, mapping, or making a five-year plan.

I look out at my own garden, and a thought creeps in: haven’t I already been chaos gardening all along?

There’s the time I organized my seed packets by vibe instead of vegetable. The year I color-coded all the seeds with little stickers. The time I accidentally used a dry-erase marker, and all the labels became blank. Now that’s chaos gardening.

For years, I told people that I was cultivating a classic English garden. After all, I lived in England for a year in the ‘90s. I own clippers with wooden handles and once read The Secret Garden on a rainy afternoon while drinking tea by the fire.

But this morning, with my cooling tea and a pile of unplanted seed packets on the counter, I finally admit the truth to myself:

I’m not an English gardener.

The slugs ate the zinnias. The lavender sulked. The rosemary along the rock wall died a horrible death. The “structured quadrant for herbs” became a bindweed buffet no matter how many times I pulled it back and dug it out by the long white roots. So what am I, then?

I google Chaos Garden. The internet is happy to help.
“A relaxed and unstructured approach to gardening where traditional rules and meticulous planning are set aside. Instead of planting seeds in organized rows, gardeners randomly scatter seeds and allow nature to determine what grows…”

Random.

That word again.

I bristle. My garden isn’t random. Not really. My edits may be intuitive, my placements sometimes “mood-based,” but there’s thought behind them. Intention. The tomato that grows in the middle of the bean bed isn’t part of the plan, but it insists on its place, and who am I to argue with such determination? I don’t have the heart to remove it, and that feels less like chaos and more like… grace.

Sure, things self-seed. Plants wander. Entire corners of the yard go rogue more than once. But still, there’s a plan. A loose one, evolving. More of a jazz improvisation than a chaotic free-for-all. One with some vision underneath the creeping buttercup and ever-seeding forget-me-nots.

I study the soil. I reverently circle the seeds in my garden catalogs. I research companion planting before giving up halfway through and planting whatever looks good next to each other. I make the beds, add the mulch, observe the sun. There’s intent, to the extent that intent performs.

So Chaos Garden?
Maybe.
But also… not.

The words hit like an insult disguised as a compliment. Like when someone calls your deeply lived-in house “eclectic” instead of cozy. Or worse, like pouring curdled milk into your first, beloved cup of tea on a Monday morning.

No. I’m not a chaos gardener. Not really.

I’m a hopeful improviser. A strategic dreamer. A chaotic planner.
A gardener with one foot in structure and the other in surrender.
A gentle gardener.

The Gentle Garden is not a place of perfection, but of permission. Here, weeds are forgiven, and wilted petals are simply part of the story. It’s a refuge where things grow in their own time, and the gardener’s hand is guided more by wonder than control. Moss softens the edges, ferns find their own rhythm, and blossoms appear like small acts of grace.

In the Gentle Garden, nothing is demanded, yet everything offers something. It is a reminder that beauty can thrive without striving. It is a sanctuary for slow mornings, muddied knees, and quiet conversations with the earth. The air hums with the soft insistence of life continuing, no matter what.

It is, above all else, a place that loves you back without judgment in a world that rarely does the same.

Finding the Glimmer: A Fall Reflection from the Garden

There’s a word I’ve been holding onto this fall – glimmer. It’s not the flash of lightning or the bold brilliance of a summer bloom. No, glimmer is smaller, quieter, and far more important. It’s that soft light that catches my attention for just a moment. It is the shimmer on a spider web after rain, the hum of a bee that refuses to give up on the fading cosmos, the way the air smells like wet earth and slugs.

But lately, Gerald the gnome and I have been struggling to find it.

Gerald insists it’s because of the weeds. He’s been particularly cross about the dandelions in the path and the creeping buttercup that continues its march into winter. He keeps muttering that no self-respecting garden should let the strawberries overtake the lavender and salvia like a berry-scented coup. And honestly, he may have a point.

I’m not much better. I tell myself to sit in the egg chair, to breathe in the soft fog of an October morning, to just be. But the minute I do, I spot another weed. Another vine creeping where it doesn’t belong. The perfectionist in me cannot stay still. I pop up, pull, trim, mutter. The “wildling” garden I claim to love just feels… messy. Overrun. Imperfect.

And so the glimmer hides.

The truth is, the garden doesn’t ask for perfection. It only asks for presence. The weeds aren’t an indictment of neglect; they’re proof of life persisting.

How many times in life do I do this? How many times do I focus on the thorns and the fungus instead of the rose?

How often do I let my focus slip from the beauty to the blemish, from the zinnia still standing proud to the one curling brown at the edges? I see the imperfection first. The flaw. The annoyance. The noise.

Maybe it’s human nature, or maybe it’s habit, this relentless seeking of what’s wrong. The garden, after all, mirrors me. It grows wild and beautiful, but never without struggle. And like me, it must weather pests and mildew and that never-ending feeling that it could be just a little better if only I worked harder.

But the glimmer asks something else of me. It asks me to pause. To look closer. To see not what’s missing, but what remains.

The glimmer doesn’t erase the imperfections. It shines through them.

So today, I will sit, even if only for a few minutes, and let the garden be what it is: overgrown, spotted, buzzing, alive. I’ll look for the small light that catches my breath and reminds me why I garden at all.

Because the weeds and the worries will always rise to the top.

But so, too, will the glimmer.