Tending Our Friendship Garden

One of my favorite pastimes is gardening. There’s something immensely satisfying when you can have this wonderful sychronicity with nature that results in a lush, beautiful garden. In the quiet, tranquility of my garden last week, I began to reflect on several of my friendships, their impact my life and vice versa. The more I contemplated my relationships, and the more I tended to my garden, the more a gardening analogy took place.

In tending to our friendship garden we first need to understand the nature of each friend we are privileged to have. Like flowers, our friends come in varying varieties. Once we understand the individual nature of our friends, the better equipped we are to be the kind of friend they need in return.

Perennials
Our perennial friends are always in full bloom, bringing a continued robust beauty and charm to our lives. They exist through self-renewal. Through thick and thin we can count on our perennial friends to be available, day after day. They are delightful, and bountiful by nature. Because of their loyalty and steadfastness, we place our trust and devotion in our perennial friends and they us. We admire and are endeared to our perennial friendships and value greatly their influence on our lives.

Annuals
Our annual friends are those with whom we see primarily during life events (i.e. holidays, weddings, birth of a child, etc.). Our annual friends bring a vigorous beauty when they are present in our lives. We savor their presence and appeal during the narrow window of time we have with them. They add value to our lives, but in small snippets. We love them and look forward to their next blooming in our lives.

Exotics
Our exotic friends are those who bring a unique diversity to our lives. They are bold and exquisitely gorgeous. They teach us to look beyond the ordinary. We see the world through different eyes due to the impact of our exotic friends. Whether they’re of a different culture, sexual preference or mindset, we embrace them wholly. We delight in their ability to provide us with a new paradigm.

Desert Flowers
Our desert flower friends are those who bring a harsh and sometimes barren element to our lives. Our desert flower friends have many redeeming qualities, which is why we put up with their coarse nature, but they are clearly a challenge to maintain. They may have a prickly exterior, can be excruciatingly judgmental or opinionated. They have a harsh exterior due to painful life circumstances, yet they are survivors because they have weathered such incredibly harsh conditions. You admire them for their strength to survive and search diligently to find the tenderness amongst the thorns. Our interaction with our desert friends tends to be limited due to the protective barriers they put up. Yet, we acknowledge that despite their tough exterior that eventually a beautiful desert flower will emerge and we hold steadfast to share in that day.

Weeds
We all have weed friends. These are the friends we politely need to weed from our lives. They are toxic, time consuming in non-productive ways, and highly annoying, altering the overall beauty of our friendship garden. Our weed friends serve no purpose and add zero value to our lives. Weed friends will continually make themselves known in our live, but the sooner we weed them out, the better and more plentiful our friendship gardens will grow.

Our network of friends is vital. For some they are our lifeline. For many they are our families. The types of friends we have in our friendship garden will speak volumes to the nurturing and care we invest in these relationships. What kind of flower would you consider yourself to be in your friends’ gardens? Are you loyal, dependable, and add value and beauty to your relationships or are you toxic, harsh and require meticulous understanding? How we conduct ourselves in our friendships will determine the overall beauty of the relationship. That reminds me, it's time to trim the rose bushes.