That Which Springs Up To Surprise Us

At least half of my garden this year is covered in volunteer plants. For those of you who have never gardened, volunteer refers to plants which were not planted by the gardener, but which spring up from last year's plants gone to seed, or as in my case, mostly from using compost that had seeds in it which did not "cook" to the proper temperature, thus rendering the compost sterile.
I've never really gotten the compost thing down and so what I've spread on my garden this year has taken root, quite literally and now giant vines of squashes, melons, and I have-no-idea-what, are stretching their tendrils across what should be rows and they are blossoming and setting fruit and there are also marigolds which seeded from last year, and a couple of zinnias.
Now if I were a real gardener, which I am not, I would probably have pulled these mystery plants up when they sprouted but as it is, I am more of a player-in-the-dirt and so have let most of them go on living, creeping across the old collards (which I am not pulling up because no matter how tough and buggy they get, they are still the chicken's favorite food) and trying to strangle the peppers and eggplants I have actually planted this year.
I'm trying to weed around and under these plants and direct them to less occupied parts of the garden but beyond that, I am letting them go to see what I get. I know I have quite a few more butternuts and I am suspecting some cantaloupes and beyond that, I don't know. I'm waiting to see what those beautiful flowers are foretelling.
Life is like that, isn't it?
You try so very hard to make plans and keep things orderly. I know I do although I am old enough to know that sometimes you just have to take what you get and if you go with it, go with the unexpected, that can be good too.

Yesterday Lily came out to spend some time with the parental units and after she took a walk and ate some pancakes she said she'd go blackberry picking with me. We loaded up our cut-off milk jugs to pick into and our water and we drove to a spot which I knew was fairly thick with blackberry bushes but I missed my turn and a few hundred yards down the road, while I was looking for a spot to turn around on, we saw a woman, frantically waving her arms.
I stopped the car, rolled down and the window and she said, "Can you help me? My grandmother was in the hospital last night and I need to go check on her. Can you please, please give me a ride to Monticello?"
Well, Monticello was a good ten miles from where we were in the middle of nowhere, Jefferson County, Florida, and this woman was a complete stranger but what the hell? This isn't the mean streets of Chicago here, folks.
"Sure," I said. "Get in."
So we drove her to Monticello and when we got there she told us she was diabetic and hadn't eaten yet and if we could give her four or five dollars it would be so helpful.
Now I could have (should have?) said, "I'm sorry. I don't have any money on me at all," but I do believe what Bob Dylan said which was that if you live outside the law you must be honest.
Not that I really live outside the law anymore, but aren't we all outlaws in in some form or another?
So I told her the truth which was that all I had was a twenty and she said that they would give me change at the Dollar General, which they did. I gave her five bucks, she thanked me, and went on her way, supposedly to Burger King where she could get some tasty food to help her with her blood sugar, etc.
I know she didn't buy any alcohol because Jefferson County is dry like the desert on Sundays. Not that I would have cared if she had bought liquor because if I can drink, why can't she?
But anyway, after she got out of the car I asked Lily if she thought I'd been scammed and she allowed as how I probably had.
"Well," I said, "here's the bottom line- no matter why she wanted a ride into Monticello, we can be pretty sure that she does have a grandmother and she's probably in ill health so there you go."
And we went back to Lloyd and picked some blackberries and had a fine time sweating our guts out and scratching up our arms and getting sunburned and talking about labor and pregnancy and so forth.
It was a delightful morning, really.
And here's what I'm saying- you can lay your bean rows out in neat and tidy lines and you can hope they grow and you can weed them and water them and fertilize them and that's a nice part of the garden. A part you planned and a part you've concentrated on making successful.
And you can pull up all the volunteers and plant more beans or okra or more peppers or what-have-you where those volunteers sprang up or you can let some of them go and see what they become. You can let them go crazy and choke out what you have planted or you can try to achieve a balance, making room for both the expected and the unexpected in whatever patch of garden you cultivate.
You can decide to go blackberry picking and you can ignore the lady waving her arms in the middle of the road or you can say, "Sure, get in the car," and you can take thirty minutes out of your Sunday morning to drive a stranger into town and you can give her five bucks and then you have a story to tell and you can still pick blackberries.

It's good to have a framework, a basic plan and it's good to let spring up what springs up on its own. Isn't there an old Yiddish saying about if you want to make god laugh, make a plan?
And then there's John Lennon who said life is what happens while you're busy making other plans.
I feel grateful that I have one of those lives where I can have it both ways. I can be open to the unexpected and I can try to create some order and I can allow the seeds of last year to surprise and delight me too. And I'm also grateful, so very grateful, that I live in a place where I can have this garden of delight for me with both order and controlled chaos and where I can pick up a stranger and drive her to town without too much worry, just do it, no big deal, here you go.

I am allowed to have balance if I seek it and how many of us are lucky enough to say that?
I am feeling very lucky today, for these and many other things, not the least of which is Lily's baby growing inside her and moving around, dancing in his or her mother's womb, stretching and curling, tapping out messages of life from inside her. A baby planned but which will end up being, for all the planning involved, a complete and utter delightful mystery and surprise, like so much of life. And if we just go ahead and accept the fact that yes, we do have control over some things, but not much, and that's fine we'd all be a lot less frustrated and a lot more content. There is great joy in discovery of what life really has in store for us if we just nurture the surprises that spring up like squashes and melons, like babies and strangers. Sometimes we get fruit and sometimes we get life and sometimes we just get an interesting break in the plan of the day.

I try to remember to have faith in that and not to try so hard to focus on the plan I think I have for myself, my garden, my marriage, my yard, my kids. Because honestly, never in a million years could I have even begun to dream of, much less plan for, the incredible joyous surprises I've experienced so far.
Sure, not everything has been as sweet as a volunteer cantaloupe, as interesting as finding myself the owner of chickens.
But for the most part- and I think we'd all agree with this- it's been the things we never saw coming, the blessings we never thought to ask for that have been the best things in our lives.

True for me, anyway.
And I'm trying to learn to trust in that. I am.