Fourteen years of love in a chaos garden
Romance in the Christian Mom Minivan era
House & Garden UK had a recent article about chaos gardening, and I thought, “Ah, yes, an intentional phrase for what I’m doing in the front yard!”
But this gives me too much credit. When I step out the front door, it’s far more unhinged than that. The “chaos garden” photos shared in that article are all master-planned landscapes with deliberate, thoughtful splashes of color and variances of form. What I have instead is a grotesque, glistening perennial jungle, an unruly mix of natives and nonnatives competing for a tiny bit of sun and space, thrown together at random. The plants are out of control. They look like they’re eating my house. Everything is way too big for where it has been planted, and I have no time to wrangle my beds.
Yesterday, while Felix and Lucy were napping, I grabbed about 15 minutes of time to deal with the overgrowth and cut it back so we could walk to our van without colliding into plants. Moses joined me and worked on climbing the huge dogwood tree (and then falling out of it) while I hacked away at spiderwort and anemone and lamb’s ear run amok. I worked up a sweat and almost filled up an entire garbage can of debris. And then when I went out this morning, expecting to see beautiful order, it looked… exactly the same. It was all just as wild and robust and creeping.
I am reminded me of one of the greatest subtly catty remarks I’ve received, from a postpartum doula who came to help us with tiny Moses. She walked in the front door and said, “Your front yard looks like the front yard of someone with a newborn.” INDEED it DOES, Cynthia, and five years later, that’s still where we’re at.
I’ll worry about the garden next year, I tell myself, if I can make it out the front door by then.
We celebrate fourteen years of marriage today.
In our current life stage, our romantic plan is to get takeout and maybe make a cocktail at home, and then pray that none of the kids wakes up more than twice in the night. Sounds like bliss!!
I love the seasonality of marriage. I love how a relationship ebbs and flows, moving through periods of growth and hardship and joy at differing, unpredictable rates.
In this season, I am so grateful for durability: for how deeply dependable Guion is, for how we have learned to bend without breaking, for the levity we find (or make) in a season of madness. We’re our own root network in miniature: Alone, we’d topple in a storm, but together, we are surprisingly strong.
Wedding outtakes
May 29, 2010, Chapel of the Cross, Chapel Hill
I made a recent confession to Guion, quietly, guiltily.
“Sometimes when you’re not here in the morning, I listen to… worship music.”
I grimaced, and he laughed. “I think that’s nice!” he said, grinning. I’d been jamming to Sandra McCracken, a real blast from my homeschooled past, and I found it so refreshing and strangely centering. I’ve been listening to it in the minivan, too, on my way to pick the boys up, and I have NO REGRETS. You gotta listen to something calming when you’re crossing four lanes of traffic at 5:01 p.m. on the bypass.
Currently Reading
All Fours, Miranda July
The Deadline, Jill Lepore
This is hilarious and lovely in equal measure - brilliant writing, Abby, and I think your garden looks lush & beautiful! My ‘garden’ is a potted plant. And a succulent, no less! You’re miles ahead of me.