When pruning leads to growth

What in your writing, or your life, needs to be uprooted?

It’s June, which means all around my house, flowers planted decades ago are coming up, blooming brave and unbidden.

The roses and peonies along the side fence welcomed me the summer we moved in, 23 years ago. I delighted and silently thanked the former owner, or maybe the one before that, who had planted them. They still bloom each year, delighting me with their showy pink blossoms, which emerge just as the lilacs finish blooming behind them.

Around my front porch, a welcoming committee of cottage garden perennials waves hello.

A few years ago, I came home from the garden center with a couple of small ferns—perfect for the bed along the back fence that languishes in the shade for most of the day. The ferns have multiplied, marching across this bed and into the lawn. This year, I realized that other flowers were being completely crowded out by the insistent ferns. Bellflowers buried their heads. Sedums disappeared beneath the ferny canopy.

I will never have neatly manicured gardens, with perfect clumps of each flower framed by neatly raked mulch. I just don’t have that much time. But I do want my gardens to bring joy to my life, and to the plants that live in them. And I’m pretty sure some of my non-fern plants would have contacted the complaint department, if they could.

I yanked out the boundary-violating ferns, giving the others room to breathe. I had to get rid of more than I expected. And when ferns are two feet tall, they don’t transplant well. So… from compost you came, to compost you will return.

And within a few days, the bellflowers bloomed. The bed, though still dominated by ferns, is slowly regaining its balance. It felt like the garden could breathe again.

What does this gardening report have to do with writing? As always, growing things offer us life lessons. God speaks through the natural world, if we take time to listen.

My roses are blooming now, and bloom every year—because I pruned them early in the season. Pruning helps them thrive. The years that I’ve neglected this task meant fewer blooms.

The back bed is balanced because I culled more than a few ferns. Again, removal leads to growth. By decluttering the garden, so to speak, every living thing there had more room to breathe.

What in your life needs to be pruned, uprooted? What do you need less of, in order to have more of what you really want?

What in your writing life could benefit from a little breathing room, a little decluttering?

Maybe you’ve said yes to more than you should have. You’re doing good things, but the busyness is crowding out time for writing. For thinking, for wondering, for curiosity and wonder—all essential pieces of a writing life.

Or your current work in progress has too many tangents, too many threads. You need to trim, edit, refocus. You need to give a character in your novel, or an idea in your non-fiction project, room to grow and bloom—and it might mean sacrificing content you’ve worked hard to create.

In writing, in life, in the garden—sometimes the good can crowd out the great. Sometimes, growth of one thing can stunt the growth of another. You might need to prune things from your schedule, from your writing, even from your relational world. You need space to breathe, to grow. What do you need to say no to, or “no more” to, in order to grow as a writer?

There may be things, in your writing or your life, hidden by good intentions. They could grow into something beautiful, if you give them the room to do so.

Where do you need to prune or uproot, in order to thrive?