Choosing Growth.

Last year, I planted some prairie seeds on a small patch of disturbed lawn in our front yard. In my impatience to wait for the seeds to grow, I also dug up some prairie plants I was familiar with from vacant lots, purchased some other plants, and then planted some more so-called natives that I was given by a coworker. Last summer, it was difficult to tell any difference between the new garden and the unseeded vacant lot up the street that was overflowing with “weeds”.

This year, I was encouraged to see some of the planted natives reappear and bloom. I also feared that many of the plants that seemed to grow the most were the unwanted weeds I had not planted. My challenge has been figuring out which of the plants that have grown in this patch are “weeds” and which are the plants that sprouted from those I had planted. Earlier tonight, I finally concluded that the “weeds” seemed to be outgrowing the plants I planted, and with great pains began to pull them. I singled out which was “weed”, and which was prairie plant by noticing the two or three plants that seemed to be dominating my prairie patch, also dominated the vacant lot up the road. I concluded that encouraging diversity must be the key to identifying what to pull and what to leave. It will probably take some more patience on my part to find out if my choice was correct.

Robert Greenleaf’s third article on the “Seven Choices for Mature Living” from the July 1966 AA Grapevine reminds us, “the demands of growth are rigorous and exacting, but the rewards are exciting (…)”. His article focuses on the importance in choosing growth as we move through life. He shares some advice from Dr. Millicent MacIntosh, the former President of Barnard College given to her seniors on ways to ensure that growth continues:

1. Have a field, throughout your life, in which you maintain high competence.
2. Read extensively outside your field.
3. Develop excellence in a manual craft.
4. Be engaged in some service to others, all of the time.

It seems that Dr. MacIntosh was reminding her students to choose diversity to ensure real growth in their lives. Allowing one or two activities to dominate our lives is a sure way to being dominated by “weeds”; diversity is the path to sustainable growth. For Greenleaf, “Growth is the recognition that life is the healer.” Life in the prairie plot in our front yard gives me a little bit of healing whenever I walk by and see a new blossom, even if it might be a blossom from what I thought was a “weed”.