For a while now, I’ve had in mind to pen some thoughts about the spirituality of gardening. Thanks to some unexpected insights that showed up last week as I was taking advantage of the beautiful weather, it seemed like a good time to start. 

The week brought a welcome change from the recent skiffs of snow as the days turned to sunshine, blue skies, and temperatures into the 60s. Eager to take advantage of the temps, especially after being under Covid 19 house arrest for the previous couple of weeks, I made my way into the backyard to tackle some overdue maintenance on the vines. 

I started along the fenceline with the Virginia Creeper, a vine that’s so insanely aggressive it’s difficult to tell where it starts and where it ends. But after the better part of a day, I had it pretty well tidied up and was ready to move on. Next stop, the hydrangeas. 

Adjacent to the back patio, there’s a large trellis against the garage with two beautiful climbing hydrangeas that have been there for 13 years. 

These vines have been doing their best to overtake the garage for a while now, so my goal was just to pry them away from the roofline, yank out the little branches that were determined to make their way through the seams of the siding, and trim everything up nicely as needed. 

Well, I spent three days working on those two hydrangeas. 

On the third day, most of the big work had been done, including the stuff along the roofline that had me carefully inching across the top of the pergola. So I was left to deal with all the smaller vines that were offshoots of the larger ones. 

Mind you, short of deadheading the wilted blooms, I’ve never done any real maintenance on these vines (which, by the way, I can now confidently say that I don’t recommend – 13 years is a long time). 

I stood on the patio and stared at the countless vines that were either dangling from higher above and caught amongst other branches in a bit of a jumbled mess, or that were growing away from the trellis and toward the patio, stretched out into mid-air as though reaching desperately for something that wasn’t there. 

With all the trimming and thinning that I’d already done, the trellis was looking a bit sparse, so I wanted to take these smaller vines and strategically weave them into the grids. Not only would this fill out the trellis, but it would give the vines some structure and direction.

I didn’t realize what I was embarking on. I ended up spending five therapeutic hours contentedly clipping, trimming, and training those vines. 

With each vine that needed attention, I surveyed the trellis, looking for bare areas that I wanted to fill in. Then I’d start to bend the vine accordingly so I could weave it through the grid and either in front of or behind other vines as needed. 

In the early stages of this process, when I’d start to bend one of the vines, I’d occasionally hear a crack. I’d cringe and inspect the vine to see if I’d caused irreparable damage, which thankfully only happened a couple of times. 

I quickly realized I needed to slow down. Some of the vines weren’t as pliable as others and I was simply bending them too abruptly. So I started working more slowly, speaking words of encouragement to them as I gave them time to adjust to the new direction I was trying to train them in (for the record, I’ve never spoken to a vine before).

At one point, one of the vines just wasn’t having it. In spite of my gentle attempt and reassurance, I felt only persisting resistance. I recalled a conversation from the day before with someone who was reflecting on the proverb that says parents are to train their children in the way they should go. “And that may not be the way I think they should go,” he observed. 

Right, got it. “Train the vine in the way it should go.”

Clearly, this was one scenario where the way it needed to go was not where I’d hoped for it to go, so I eased up and rethought the approach, and everything turned out well. But I digress.

Now, these vines have lots of little twigs jutting off of them at various places, which is where the actual flowers grow. They’re various lengths and some of them have little buds at the tip getting ready to sprout, some have leaves already eagerly budding out, and some are simply dead remains of what once bore a beautiful flower. 

As I was working with the vines – strategically bending and weaving and inserting and occasionally pulling and pushing – these twigs kept getting hung up on other vines and on the grids of the trellis. I’d have to carefully tend to them with one hand so that they didn’t get damaged, while pulling the vine with my other hand. Certainly a bit of extra work, but it was all part of the process. 

That said, if the twigs were dead, I didn’t bother tending to them. At first, I’d just give an extra tug or two if they got hung up because I didn’t care if they broke off. That worked fine a couple of times but it became troublesome, especially when one of the dead twigs got caught on a vibrant bud from another vine without me realizing it and my tug caused the budding flower to get ripped right off. Sigh.

So, instead, I started surveying each vine and proactively trimming off any little dead twigs before doing anything else. And, no surprise here, it made for a much smoother process as I trained it through the trellis and around the other vines. 

And here’s where a spiritual gardening principle began to hit me.

It’s not uncommon for us as people to hold onto things that no longer serve us. Maybe they’re physical items that take up space in the house or the basement or the garage or the storage unit. Maybe they’re traditions or beliefs. Maybe they’re internal tapes that run in the background of our mind. Maybe they’re relationships. Maybe they’re regrets or hurts.

Regardless of what form they take, these things can impede our ability to move through life effectively. Just like the dead twigs were impeding the vine’s ability to weave through the trellis and among the other vines. 

Sure, we can still traverse life. And we do. But with more effort than it would take if we could shed some of these things. With more likelihood that we’ll get hung up on something and have a difficult time moving forward, if we can move forward at all. 

Worse yet, maybe our dead twig will get caught on another twig that’s healthy and budding and rip it right off the vine, causing unnecessary damage to something that was otherwise doing just fine.

There’s a reason that pruning is crucial to the health and vitality of plants (says the man who let his hydrangea go for 13 years without a pruning). The stuff that no longer serves a purpose needs to get trimmed off (of course, it’s not only the stuff that no longer serves a purpose that needs to get trimmed off, but that’s another topic). 

Also, there was something else. 

Sometimes while working with these vines, I’d come across one that didn’t seem to have much going on. There were no twigs or buds that I could see, so I’d follow its path in both directions, first toward its starting point, then to where it ended. At that point, depending on how much life was actually sprouting from it, I’d make a choice whether or not to keep it. 

Sometimes there would be several feet of nothing but then it would branch out and have all kinds of life stemming from it. Other times, there’d be just one single bud way at the end of the vine.

And so I’d ask myself, was it worth keeping? 

Did I want this one particular vine that was weaving in and out of other vines, taking up space, and ultimately requiring a certain amount of the plant’s resources, simply to get one single flower at the end?

No doubt the flower would be beautiful when it bloomed, and at some point a year or two down the road there would likely be more flowers, but was it worth it? And would it really even be noticed?

In most cases, I snipped those vines right off. 

And it got me thinking again about the parallels to life. Because it’s not only things that are damaging to us that we need to trim off. It’s not only things that may weigh us down in a distinctly negative way. 

Sometimes we may need to say goodbye to something that in and of itself is neutral or maybe even positive, but the benefit of hanging onto it may not truly be worth it. Keeping it would likely require some amount of resource – physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially – and it might be in our best interest to let it go so that those resources can be invested elsewhere.

There are all kinds of reasons we hang on to things. Sentimentality. Guilt. Expectations. Obligation. Tradition. Fear. Even desperation. 

And making the choice to let go of something isn’t easy. Sometimes it’s downright painful. 

But for our own benefit and growth – and possibly even for that of others – we need to take inventory and be willing to prune the things that need to go. And we need to trust that it’s okay to do so. 

There’s plenty more that could be said about all of this and I’m sure I’ll be circling back to the topic. For now, I’m thankful that I had the downtime to spend all those hours tending to the vines that day.

And thankful for the insights that showed up along the way. 

At first, it was a bit alarming to see how many clippings ended up in the yard waste bin and how bare everything looked in comparison to how it had been before I started, but the vines are going to thrive and the space will look great.

And, as an added bonus, the garage is no longer at risk of being swallowed up. I’ll just make sure not to wait another 13 years before doing this again.