In July, I typically spend time in the garden, pruning back overgrown shrubs and flowers. They are just at that point where the plant is busting out all over, and becoming huge; but the flower is about to pass by. Kind of like when you know you need your haircut, because it’s starting to annoy you. But when you make the appointment, you feel a pang because it just looks so — perfect right now. It would feel worse to be ruthless if it wasn’t grounded in some real knowledge. And expertise. And yes, it is indeed (you guessed, clever reader) an analogy for many other things in life.

When you are a writer, you need to have the knowledge to cut and edit and refine your words down to the spare and necessary few. Verbosity may seem beautiful, but experts know it’s not. When you are a manager, you need to snip away at redundancy and waste, nurturing special talents in your people and getting rid of habits, assignments, even people that may seem very cool but are not part of a productive and creative team. Spiders constantly maintain their webs, detaching weak or useless strands, strengthening key ones. Homeowners throw away broken and useless gadgets and junk to remove clutter and let the good stuff shine through. And gardeners. best of all, gardeners.

One of the reasons I couldn’t clean out and trim up my inherited garden wilderness for the whole first two summers I lived here was that I just didn’t have the knowledge. What was a weed, and what was good? What kind of tree was I looking at? This plant has cool flowers, but is it everywhere because that was the plan, or is it just “self seeding” and it’s blown itself all over the place? Is it OK to get rid of some stuff, or will it be irreplaceable? And when do the peonies and daylilies start to lose their floral “oomph” and need to be ferociously cut back to make room for other stuff? How will the homework needed to do judicious and knowledgeable pruning result in a more beautiful and productive masterpiece in this place? Know the garden first. Then have at it.

Kathryn Levesque

Greenfield