{"id":37001,"date":"2022-11-12T00:01:50","date_gmt":"2022-11-12T08:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=37001"},"modified":"2026-06-06T07:13:42","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T07:13:42","slug":"let-us-tend-our-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/let-us-tend-our-garden\/","title":{"rendered":"Widowed: ‘Let Us Tend Our Garden’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"widowed-let-us-tend-our-garden<\/a>
Let us tend our garden. Some things are doing well in my garden right now — this Alstroemeria Inticancha Indian Summer is one. Photos by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“Let us tend our garden.” Those are the words that famously conclude Voltaire’s satirical novel “Candide.”<\/span>“Candide” was the rascally Voltaire’s riposte to the philosopher Leibnitz, who insisted that because the world was created by God, and because God is good, this world of ours must necessarily be the “best of all possible worlds.”<\/p>\n

Voltaire set out to prove Leibnitz not just wrong, but foolish, piling one (God-given?) cruelty after another upon Candide, the novel’s hapless namesake.<\/p>\n

\"widowed-let-us-tend-our-garden<\/a>
Same goes for our backyard, which was planted with drought resistant manzanita and salvia last summer. All but two of the plants are taking hold, slowly but surely.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some readers have since given the “let us tend our garden” phrase a political spin — live and let live. Others see it as a kind of 18th-century mindfulness technique — focus on the simplicity of the garden.<\/p>\n

The original French, “Il faut cultiver notre jardin,”<\/em> is typically translated literally, “We must cultivate our garden.\u201d But, for reasons\u00a0long-forgotten, the translation I’m recalling from my college French days is, “Let us tend our garden.”<\/p>\n

Maybe it’s because, sixty years after I last read Voltaire, “We must cultivate our garden,” feels bossy and heavy with certitude. There’s been way too much certitude flying around in cyberspace in recent years. So I’m sticking with, “Let us tend our garden.”<\/p>\n

\"Dead-salvia\"<\/a>
This salvia is one of the two plants that didn’t make it through the summer; a clump of grass and a prickly thistle are taking advantage of its water drip.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yesterday was my usual writing day. But when I woke up, that gentle suggestion, let us tend our garden, came to mind, and I took it as license to play hooky from blog post writing for a day. I gave myself permission to spend the daylight hours ahead of me tending to my garden, which, on this occasion, meant shopping to replace two shrubs that had died over the summer.<\/p>\n

And so, today, instead of words, I’m giving you photos. Photos of my day, tending my garden, which isn’t as easy as Voltaire made it out to be.<\/p>\n

Planting a garden involves decisions, tough ones, including determining what not to let into your garden. A trip to the plant nursery is a perilous venture — so many plants, crying out to be taken home. But\u00a0I held the line yesterday. I purchased two and only two plants.<\/p>\n

\"California-fuchsia-Oaktown-Native-Plant-Nursery<\/a>
I needed to find replacements for the two backyard plants that didn’t survive — the salvia and a manzanita. So it was off to the Oaktown Native Plant Nursery in Berkeley, where I was greeted by this stand of California fuchsia, which made me wonder — do I have room somewhere for another of these glorious natives? No, I don’t. B<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"widowed-let-us-tend-our-garden<\/a>
Also on offer at Oaktown Native Plant Nursery were these pussypaws. They’re a small perennial herb that grows in the mountains of California. They’re adorable. I wanted one. But they need too much water. And — where would I put one? I said no<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"stinging-nettle-california\"<\/a>
Oaktown Native Plant Nursery offered stinging nettle for sale — draped with a hands-off caution tape. Stinging nettle is edible. You can make tea with it. But don’t touch it; it really does sting. I left this nasty little green thing where I spotted it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

More garden stuff at, “A Pollinator Garden: Putting in the Plants and Hoping for the Birds, the Bees and the Beetles.”<\/a>\u00a0 And more about what’s growing below my yard at “Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beholder — But What If There’s No Beholder?”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"let-us-tend-our-garden<\/a><\/p>\n

Translating Voltaire for my backyard: “We must cultivate our garden,” feels bossy and rife with certitude. I prefer, “Let us tend our garden.”\u00a0 Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49224,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,50,14],"tags":[2647,2648,34,472,2649,2650],"class_list":["post-37001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-rocky-spiritual-journey","category-on-writing-reading","category-widowed","tag-california-fuchsia","tag-candide","tag-dont-miss","tag-garden","tag-oaktown","tag-voltaire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37001"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49242,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37001\/revisions\/49242"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}