Our little American Redbud has doubled in size since we planted it in May, but it has a long, long way to go.
I have a reputation for making decisions fast. Too fast, maybe. Big decisions, at least. Like buying my first house after only a day of looking, and this house overnight after a single video tour. Like organizing concert tours, or ordering airplanes to rescue dogs in a blizzard, and putting people’s lives and thousands of dollars on the line.
But put in front of me a little decision and I am sometimes paralyzed. Once, as I floundered over an over-ambitious diner menu in Truckee, California, the waitress finally squatted on her haunches to meet me eye to eye. “Honey,” she cooed, “it’s only breakfast,” and took the menu from my hand. Shorthand advice I’ve tried to live by ever since: don’t sweat the small stuff; go with your gut; have faith you’ll always get another chance to try the other choices on the menu.
Yesterday, as I stood in the nursery trying to choose between several native shrubs for the front yard, I heard the Truckee waitress in my head. The shrubs were on sale, it would have been a good time to buy, if not to plant. And, after all, I’ve been studying our yard and the plant catalogs and native websites for months to narrow plant choices and locations. I’ve drawn maps. I’ve made spreadsheets. I kinda know what I want, it should have been a quick decision. And yet here I stood in the hot sun, unable to make up my mind, and unsure of the choices I’ve made so far. The thing is, I thought, it’s not only breakfast this time. These plants are going to live (and grow bigger) in our yard for decades - much longer than we will own this house or be alive. I want something that will look at least a little bit substantial while I’m here, but is the perfect choice for future owners, animal and human. I want to be glad five, ten years from now of the decision I made staring at those shrubs. It’s not breakfast, true. But neither is it life or death. It is a decision that lies somewhere in-between.
In the end, I let it go. Instead, I bought just what I came for (and a little more), and vowed to tackle the bushes later in the fall. There will be another day, I promised myself. I’ll get another chance. There will always be more shrubs to choose from, and time to get them in the ground.