Lily bloom

Lily bloom
Originally uploaded by c'estbonne

The particular beauty of my balcony garden exists in its variety. I find endless joy in watering and nurturing the blooms there, watching pots and baskets spill over with color and exuberant growth. It's a little wild, and certainly the most decorated porch in the apartment complex. But it's also now a sanctuary, a private space, a habitat for visitors like hummingbirds and fuzzy bees. It has vibrance and color and magic and purpose, a far cry from the skeletal blank space it was before. It has life.

But I find I have the same "problem" with my little gardens as I do in my life beyond the balcony: lack of focus. In late winter, in early spring, even as I begin potting and planting, I tell myself that I will design the garden--carefully choose the color palette and textures; provide for some calming green foliage to complement the flowers and break up busyness; grow primarily those plants that I've always had a particular love for. And then I go to the nursery, and I see flower after flower that inspires me, and I see beautiful plants that do not go well together but that I can't resist, and I am impulsively overcome with a desire for a brightly colorful and uncontrolled spill of a flower garden gone wild, and that's what I get. Which is not bad; it just means I've yet again lost both sight of my goal and patience, and just given in to whatever caught my fancy in the moment. The result is a bunch of flowers that I love, but a space that has no grounding.

There is something to be said for impulsiveness and imagination, and allowing for spontaneous creativity and passion. But I believe a signature quality of a successful life is being able to "weed out" some of those options that look appealing, but which will ultimately be short-lived. If our energy is moving out to everything we might possibly like all at once, there's precious little left to pool toward a single, more powerful direction.

This will remain my goal, on my own behalf. In the meantime, I will enjoy my flowers, and their endearingly bright chaos.