#garden thoughts
I said in a previous post that I’d talk about nurture more. This is going to be a bit of a tricky one because it combines basically all of my blog topics, and I haven’t tried to do that yet.
My primary goal for most of my behavior is to be nurturing. I want all my relationships, with my friends, family, partners, neighbors, communities, ecosystems, to be nurturing, so that everyone involved feels appreciated and encouraged to grow. And most of the important lessons I’ve learned about nurture are most apparent in gardening.
The thing I most often consider about gardening is that I don’t do any of the growing. I can’t make plants grow. Plants do that all on their own. Similarly, I can’t make plants thrive, or heal from injury, or bear fruit. They do that on their own, too. Most of my actions are restricted to manipulating the environment around them, and the means I have at my disposal for doing so are fairly limited. I can plant them in spots where they get good sun. I can clear weeds from around them that might hinder their growth. I can water them when it’s too dry. Almost all of my effort in gardening is one of those activities. So, the act of gardening is to identify the needs of the plants and read their current health through observation, and enrich their environment as I am able in ways that help them to grow and thrive. If they are thriving, they will bear plentiful fruit, which enriches me.
With humans, it’s not that different. Different humans thrive best in different environments. Just like some plants need more sunlight or rain, some humans need more of certain kinds of affection and validation. Just like different plants prefer different soil, different humans thrive better in different home and social environments. I want to help my friends thrive, to be a part of a nurturing environment for them. Luckily, humans can tell me how they feel easier than plants can, but that doesn’t mean listening is always easy. But through communication, consent, and observation, I can learn what kinds of love, affection, and support my friends prefer from me. Following a strict formula for how to care for someone, like heteronormativity or amatonormativity or cisnormativity, is not ideal, even for cis heterosexual alloromantic people, because people have unique needs that are constantly changing. So, I always consider what would help my friends thrive, and this directs me to love them in unique ways that hopefully will nourish them. If I’m succeeding, they will thrive better than they would have if I was not in their life. If that’s not the case, then I need to reconsider my actions and understanding.
The previous post asked how I view relationships. I think about relationships a lot beyond just interpersonal relationships with humans. The way I see the world is many systems of relation, interconnected, nested, always changing. I see myself as a set of systems, biological organs, emotions, thoughts, memories, actions, and I see myself as a part of many other systems, families, communities, personal relationships, clubs, cultural groups; this is what I mean by “my environment”. Likewise, I’m a part of some relationships with other people, and part of their environment, and my actions help shape their environment. Much like an environmentalist would aim to leave a place better than they found it, I want my presence in someone’s life to improve their environment. Much like gardening, I would like my love for my friends to be a little extra sunlight and rain in the amounts they need. And just like attempting to claim the sunshine and rain would be an act of hubris, love also should not be claimed or possessed, and instead freely given (this is where my fondness for the culture of polyamory comes in).
One of the techniques I use in my garden is companion planting, or coplanting. Coplanting is when two or more plants, when planted together, benefit each other in some way. The best coplanting matches are when the plants actually thrive more than they would on their own. The most famous example of this is corn and beans. Beans return nitrogen to the soil which the corn needs to stay healthy, and the corn stalk is a good place for the bean to climb to reach sunlight. Companion plants can provide a lot of other benefits, like covering the soil to retain moisture and deterring pests. So, when I enter a committed relationship, I think about the relationship that companion plants have with each other, how they each improve the local environment for the other. I wish to improve my partner’s life, and I would like my partner to improve mine, so that most of the ways we interrelate are mutually beneficial, and our shared love helps us to thrive.
