Examining the Costs

Today’s “lessons from the garden” blog will talk about cost.  Gardens have all kinds of costs, some are easily seen, and others are not. Understanding the costs of something helps us understand the value we should place upon it.

The easiest cost to know is the money I spend each year on plants.  It’s normal for me to spend around $100-$200 each year on new plants.  One year, I spent well over $500, just on my little green friends.  When you consider that I have one very large bed, plus several smaller beds in the backyard, a sun garden that runs the entire width of the south side of the house, a shade garden on the north side, and front yard landscaping; it’s not too bad.

Other known costs can be any hardscape, arbors, fencing, garden decorations, and other related stuff. There’s usually mulch to buy, and plant fertilizer.  I have pots for annuals, potting soil, various tools, and garden gloves.  Keeping the gardens watered during dry spells certainly drives up the cost. Of course, the garden tools normally last several seasons, but I go through about a pair of gardening gloves each year. (Making it real simple for my son to know one of the gifts to buy me each Christmas)

Unknown costs from gardening might be the cost associated with failing to take some sort of preventive care.  Failure to act can cause me to lose plants, or have some disease spread to other plants.

There are also the hours I spend each year doing basic maintenance.  My free-time in the month of May is pretty much taken cleaning up and preparing the garden.  It takes time away from my family.  I’m less prone to do things off-the-cuff in May.  It’s the ‘beast’ I live with that month. The garden also takes away from my other hobby, writing. 

 

The people of the Capital City, in my book, Ten Days, have discovered that the choices they’ve made have a cost.  For some the price is very steep. Most did not make an active choice to pay the price, but it happened anyhow.  In each case, the main characters stepped-up-their-game for the cause of their country. 

I think most of us don’t consider the cost to any number of choices we made through the day.  Maybe we decide to pack our lunch versus going out because of the money being spent. Sometimes we’ll make that choice for health reasons.  But, there may be a cumulative impact to some choices we just don’t see immediately.

Awhile back, I started drinking a certain soft drink because it eased a problem I was having with my stomach.  I made the choice to do it to relieve some pain I was experiencing, but the choice caused another health related problem. I was shocked when I went to the doctor and discovered that I had gained 8-10 pounds in less than two months.

I’m convinced that almost everything we do has some cost associated with it.  If we exercise it is great for our body, but it might cut into time spent with our family. The desire for a promotion might mean long hours at work, and less time for loved ones, or to workout, impacting our health.

Many of the women in my workplace are also moms.  Several of them have expressed a strong preference to be at home, versus the workplace. Some are working to provide health insurance, which is better than the one offered by their husbands company. Others feel their income is required to provide a better life-style than they would have otherwise.

We each only have 24 hours in a day.  Some of us are living lives full of meaning and substance; others waste a huge chunk on things of little real value. So, how long has it been since you’ve evaluated the cost of the decisions you’re making?  

Have you “dug deep” in doing that evaluation? Maybe it’s time to change the price being paid for one thing, and invest it in something else.

Change Happens

Change comes to my garden, whether I plan it or not.  The three-year-rule is planned change.  To restate from an earlier blog; it is where I give a plant three years in one location to thrive, or it gets moved to another location.  In that case, I decide that something isn’t working, and make the change.  Other changes to my garden are completely by surprise.  Some changes surprise me and they shouldn’t.

 

Once-in-awhile a plant doesn’t return after the winter.  I don’t fully understand why.  It may have returned for three or four years, then suddenly one year it just doesn’t.  Maybe the winter was just too rough.  We get some pretty tough winters here in Ohio, and there are times I wonder if I’ll return in the spring.

Sometimes, a plant just fades away, midseason.  I might see it coming, I’ll try some form of intervention, and it still doesn’t work. There are places in my yard that appear to be “dead zones”.  No matter what I do, or what type of plant goes in there, it might last a year or two but it’s still going to die.  Is it the soil, drainage?  I can’t explain it.

Finally, there’s the change I should expect.  Plants like all living things just don’t last forever. It is the natural order of things.  There are upward limits, which vary from one type of plant to another but, the end is the same. 

Even if we set aside the morose end-of life discussion, there is an ebb and flow to all of life.  Institutions, cultures, even economies, go through cycles.  There is a place in our minds where we humans seem to believe that there isn’t a natural end of those kinds of things.  Failure to anticipate and be prepared to respond can lead to ruin. The American automobile industry was almost brought to its knees because it failed to see the major changes taking place with the consumer, and change with them. 

I’m a bit of a history buff.  I wonder what it was like to live in the last years of the Roman Empire.  Did the citizens remember what had been?  Could they see the end coming?  Were they even aware that the culture was in a steep decline?  Did they believe the “end” would actually happen?  Were the same things true of the Czar’s Russia, or the Incas?

One of the background themes in Ten Days is the decline of a culture.  There are hints within the book, which will be explored more in the sequels, of what has led to the end of this fictional country.

The characters of Ten Days are caught-up in this unexpected change.  Everything they have known is in the process of being swept away by forces they can’t control. By the time we catch up with them in the book, they know the end is coming.  Yet, there is a strong undercurrent of denial.  The end cannot possibly be happening.  Like most of us, they try to maintain a sense of hope, in a hopeless situation.

I walk through my garden almost daily.  Part of the reason for doing so is to manage the garden, be aware of what’s happening, and try to be proactive.  Maybe, like my walking through my garden to assess what’s going on, we should be aware of the ebb and flows within our own lives and culture.

It’s possible we can reverse some of those changes.  Maybe we just have to accept them.  Another option is to be proactive and come up with a plan to deal with the change.  To my way of thinking, denial is never a good plan.