It’s hard to put into words the huge, heaping volumes of psychodrama that slowly but surely overcome you after you casually agree to be on a stop on a garden tour.
Think of all the crooked roads your mind takes when you suspect that a mechanic is trying to swindle you. Consider the abounding brainpower your imagination consumes in the time between an online search of your symptoms and your medical appointment. Recall, if you dare, that absurdly slow and painful breakup with that one college sweetheart and the subsequent nights you lay awake trying to figure out what went wrong.
Take all that, add it together and double the sum. This is how—a week before the tour—your spouse comes home to find you fully clothed, curled up in a dry bathtub, looking terrible, smelling worse and blubbering something about dog poop and never planting Houttuynia again.
“Sure,” you answered breezily when asked to open your garden. You were proud of your space on that day and flattered to be invited. And it was, like, a year away. Sure. Why not? “Sounds like fun!” you said.
But a strange chemical reaction began to percolate inside you then, and soon you stood looking at your garden with entirely new eyes. Specifically, through your visitors’ eyes! You were seeing your garden through their eyes, and, just like that, nothing looked anywhere near as good as it had before. And the mistakes! Suddenly your garden teemed with flaws. Hundreds. Thousands! Up-close flaws hiding far-off flaws, and those hiding even more.
Driven by sheer panic, you sweat every detail and you work and work and work, but then a funny thing happens. By D-Day, the garden actually looks pretty good! And you even feel pretty good. The visitors show up, and they’re surprisingly nice. You stand around as folks respectfully stroll around expressing compliments. You struggle to avoid doing that weird, royal-wave thing. Some of the guests ask questions that indicate they don’t know much. You answer them helpfully. Some guests make comments that indicate they know more than you. From them, you learn a few things.
Soon enough, the tour is over, and when the last person has left you order a pizza and drink some wine. You feel content. In your pocket you have the e-mail addresses of four potential new gardening friends and the number of some guy who offered you $40 to come look at what’s wrong with his roses.
Even better, you’ve inspired others to garden a little more, and a little better. Still. Despite this. A year forward and a week prior to next year’s tour, that’ll be you: In the bathtub, begging the heavens for more time and fewer weeds.
