We must cultivate our garden. For a couple of yuppie homesteaders, a French phrase with the double-entendre of taking care of a physical garden and the garden of one’s soul is right up our alley. My husband first introduced me to this phrase when he sent me one of the first emails after we met. It was his tagline below his name.
This phrase would show up a couple of other places. In a little plaque hanging in our house. Occasionally on another written document here or there. Nothing obvious. Just there… as if it was waiting to be noticed.
I would come to understand the significance of that phrase to him, particularly as a skinny little Cajun kid who had family members who speak fluent French. But it would come to have a special significance to me and to us as a couple as well.
The command in this phrase – one must cultivate their own garden – is very empowering. In cultivating your own garden, you create your own opportunities for happiness.
I used to have a more simplistic phrase: Be good and be happy. To me, life was about achieving those two goals and, upon inspection, I believed that most would find them painfully intertwined. For me, it’s impossible to be good if one is not happy. Unhappy people may be more desperate or more willing to take risky chances. Conversely, it would be hard to be happy if one was not good. The sense of self-pride one takes in realizing that he or she is “good” helps to foster that sense of happiness.
Be good and be happy is similar to Il faut cultivar notre jardin. The imperative is that in working towards something and taking care of something, it will lead to something beautiful.
Today, that has special meaning to me. There is the practical, of course. Keeping the “garden” of our home pretty well-tended gives me satisfaction. Having a clean house, well-prepared food, food growing in our real garden, a pleasant outside setting… they all feel like a well-tended garden.
But the internal is so much more significant. This phrase resonated with my husband not just because of French-speaking relatives or his yuppie homesteading life with two big gardens, but because he understood the imperative. Tend the garden of your soul and you will be satisfied. That message resonates for me.
For a long time, I didn’t live by that motto. I worked very hard at being good and felt like being happy was simply an ideal and not necessarily a requirement all of the time. I believed I was tending the garden by merely being a good leader, keeping a rather orderly house and attempting to be a good partner, friend, sibling and daughter in what little free time I had left.
Then slowly, just as the yoga nidra session starting changing my perception, “Il faut cultivar notre jardin” creeped slowly from my subconscious to my conscience. “Be good and be happy” made a strong comeback. Somewhere in there, there was a message for my soul.
And the message wasn’t just limited to me or my self-discovery of what it means to live a different life. After a year of blog posts (you just haven’t seen them yet), that much is obvious. I’m learning to cultivate the garden of my soul. I’m making time for things that I haven’t done before. I’m exploring painting for the first time and writing again. I’m doing more with family and friends. I’m sitting upright and present at the table of soul food with my knife in one hand, a fork in the other, my plate full and my napkin tucked into the front of my shirt. I’m all in on nourishing my soul.
But for Darryl and I, cultivating our own garden also means investing in our relationship. It’s true we got married later in life and we haven’t had the same amount of time that our similarly aged peers have had to get used to the routine of marriage. But, it’s important that we don’t allow our life together to get stale. We both worked too hard for this relationship and we endured too many other failed relationships not to make this one a priority.
And that’s where cultivating the garden of our marriage comes in. It seems like a silly concept created by Hallmark movie channel writers, but it’s actually fairly straightforward and simple: do the work to build something beautiful.
Recently, we did massages and dinner out in this little resort town right next to us. It’s something we do about once a quarter. When we plan correctly, we slide into that 4 p.m. massage slot, get done about five, walk around the little town for a bit and then slip over for dinner at one of our two favorite restaurants sometime after 6 p.m. One is a craft brewery which has a great outdoor beer garden. We loved their beers so much we served them at our wedding. The other is a cool little American Italian restaurant which does a lot of organic foods and has a great wine list and ambience. Either way, we won’t go wrong.
That’s one of the things that has been important to us… that we continue to date. Obviously, there are those nights when no one feels like cooking that you end up just going out because, hey, it’s easier. Let’s face it. We all do that. But, it’s also important to date. Every once in awhile you need a “stop-looking-at-your-phone, hold-my-hand-across-the-table” date.
Even with COVID, we try to do this every couple of weeks. Lately, they’ve been home-based activities: a movie on the couch, a fire out in the firepit, or just a conversation and a glass of wine. When there isn’t a pandemic, it’s a movie or another dinner out but without actually leaving town. Other times, it’s making dinner at home together and watching something we’ve recorded on the DVR. Every once in awhile, it involves waltzing in the dining room in stocking feet like we did when we were planning our wedding dance. Sometimes, it costs no money and other times, it will be a little pricey. Rarely, funnily enough, does it involve an overnight stay anywhere. Let’s face it – we live out in the country with a spoiled kitty. It seems silly to stay overnight when the quietest and darkest environment to sleep is in our own house and quite frankly, the cat will be happier.
I think date nights have become a real glue that helps us be the couple that we are. We mostly laugh and joke. We plan together well and we even do home improvement together well. It’s good that we share the same values and we have a healthy respect for each other. People find it weird when I say we don’t really argue. We may disagree, but no one ever really gets angry.
But date nights pull us out of the rut that married couples can fall into of really being just each other’s best friends. Absolutely, he is my best friend. He’s also my partner. Date night reminds us both that this garden we’re building – this marriage – needs our attention. It requires turning over new soil, watering the plants and plucking the weeds. If it takes a recorded Nova episode (yes, we’re that dorky), making dinner together, kicking off our shoes and waltzing in the dining room or massages and dinner, it’s worth the investment.
Il faut cultiver notre jardin. Happy gardening!
The Yuppie Homesteader 