Last Friday was a big day for us at Laurel Hill as we welcomed 80 local horticulture interns for a day of cooperative service at the arboretum. The amount of work that can be produced by 80 young, fit, and hungry gardeners is not unlike that of an Amazonian ant colony clearing its way through the jungle (check out Carl Stephenson’s short story ‘Leiningen versus the Ants’), except nicer, and somewhat easier to direct.

Our natural burial area, Nature’s Sanctuary, had been struggling with an overwhelming amount of invasive plants and vines, more than any of us could tackle over a summer. To see structure restored and the intended planting largely freed from the chaos of weeds is joyful to say the least. As caring stewards, we breathe better when our plants do. Our big day of weeding brought back to my mind the fact that ecological systems are not so much in balance, as we sometimes imagine, as in the contant flux of power battles and strategic niche finding. Every minute of every day, plants compete for light and root space, available moisture and nutrients. They climb atop each other and sneak in and out of each other’s shade. We suspect some of them can also share and divide resources in ways we do not yet fully understand. In a crisis or sub-optimal environment, some plants power ahead to bring forth seeds (teenage pregnancy), while others with longer life spans slow down to bide their time (freezing their eggs as an insurance policy, metaphorically speaking). Today’s victorious weed rises to the top by strangling all that comes in its way like Shakespeare’s ruthless bastard, Iago, but it might fall dead at first frost. Small groundcover plants strategize like go players, claiming ground one move at a time, one season at a time. Tiny seeds wait and wait and wait under inches of soil until flash flood, bird’s scratch, or trowel brings them close enough to the surface for them to take their best shot at living their best life.

This is not clockwork but the absolutely serene wait for a favorable set of circumstances that might or might not come. The flip side of this (to us almost unbearable) patience is an unapologetic drive. Nothing in the plant world is hesitant. Everything performs to its best ability based on its most limiting factor. Everything has a season and a reason and is resolutely future-oriented. Unlike us, plants have no regrets and no wishes. Without ego, they are free to unfold utterly in the present. They point us to the deepest, most precious joy of reveling in what is. They are not looking for grace, they’re being it.