It is early morning. The sky is still dark, but birds are singing. If I stare out the window, I see moment-to-moment changes in the sky as daylight emerges.

 

Last week I pruned my roses. I was on the late side of pruning (I once read you were supposed to do it on Presidents’ Day, which is mid-February), but given our March snow, delay had its virtue this year. I approach the task of pruning with an array of feelings:  anticipation of its pleasure, worry for my plants’ health, regret that I have roses needing tending to in the first place.  I clip aggressively and am always certain that I’ve cut too much away.  “This year I think I killed them,” I say afterwards, surveying a bed of little green leafless nubs that seem too small, too ugly to have the potential to become bushes, no less roses.  But so far, every year they have defied my low expectations and grown, so by June there are buds opening to summer light.

 

I inherited these rose bushes when I moved into my house 15 years ago. I had never been responsible for a garden of any sort, and I promptly ran out to buy a gardening book.  (It is a point of minor interest that I bought a book from a bookstore rather than searching the Internet for information—a telling difference of 15 years’ time.)  

 

I read my book and followed instructions dutifully—cutting just above an outer bud, cutting neatly at an angle so the cut surface of the branch would lean outward, clearing away weak branches in favor of strong ones, shaping the plant to create a circular space for light and air.  I fertilized and watered.  I found camaraderie among others who tended roses, with whom I could share my anxieties.  (One of our first conversations went like this:  “My roses have black spots on them.” “That’s blackspot.”  Off to my book, to read about blackspot.)  

 

One of my graduate students learned of my new roses, and she brought me a clipping from her roses.  I rooted it in water, then planted it in a planter.  When it outgrew the planter, I transplanted it into an empty space to the side of our house, once the home of overgrown weeds, the only free area with direct sunlight.  The soil was dry and even rocky, but the clipping-turned-plant flourished, growing huge with leaves and the occasional red rose.  

 

I routinely procrastinate, but I love the act of pruning.  It feels so good to clear away old growth and create room for new. It is simultaneously an obligation and an opportunity, and as I prune I think of my life. What needs culling way?  What is getting unruly? What gets in the way of fresh growth?  Are the branches of my life going in too many directions?  Are some weak branches at odds with the stronger, perhaps more vital ones?  What is cluttering up the space of my life, stealing oxygen and time and daylight?

 

I hesitated to write about pruning as a metaphor because it is so obvious.  It risks being a cliché or at least a too-familiar example—but if overused it is for good reason.  We all need pruning at certain times. We grow but get bulky, holding on to old branches even when they poke us and stick out at funny angles, even when their thorns scratch us.  We see that some leaves get ragged or that we’ve let the bugs get to us, but we resist letting go and stripping clean.  In even the best life, weeds grow (and it’s so darn hard to get the roots out, so they keep growing back).  Perhaps some of you will not get the point of this writing because you find letting go easy.  You turn over your soil regularly, and you never fall behind on your weeding.  I, however, am a master at holding on.  I let go with difficulty, usually kicking and screaming.

 

I am at a time of pruning my life.  I ask myself what I can let go of to make room for new growth.  I ask myself how to create fertile growth, how to let in adequate sunlight.  I ask myself about the elusive balance of work and rest, of action and reflection, of creativity and refilling—a balance that inevitably falters with passing time and needs resetting with each season.

 

The sky is light enough now for me to see trees against pale blue. The birds continue their insistent morning calls.  My cat sits near me, washing with focus and feline single-mindedness.  She sheds her winter coat freely.