Gardening has been an excellent teacher. I have learned some profound truths from planting, tending, pruning. Here is one:

There are containers you can buy - tempered to withstand heat, filled with nutrient rich soil, equipped with good drainage. In these containers you can safely nestle plants and stand back and be amazed...it's easy to flourish temporarily in such a controlled environment.

Did you catch that word - temporarily?

In gardening, as in life, if something is healthy, it grows. And when something continually grows, it needs space. Containers limit you. Containers can provide a healthy spot to bloom for only so long.

I had two rock rose plants - one in a container, one in the ground. The first year, the container plant outdazzled the other. It was safe, portable, and highly fertilized. Nothing crowded it. No other root systems interrupted its pattern of growth. It dwelt in a community of other container plants, but there was no rub. They were distinct, individual, together yet alone.

The other endured drought and flood, blazing temps and freezing temps, it was planted near a sage bush that exploded in growth, crowding in on its area. A rogue honeysuckle jumped our neighbor Memaw's fence and had to be continually uprooted in the rock rose's territory. It was a much messier position.

Year two - the container plant yellowed and started to wilt away, but the rock rose planted deeply begin to experience a new birth. It grew, it bloomed, it spread. It lived...and lives still. Being no fool, I quickly transplanted the container plant. I put it in the ground and let it get its feet wet. 

It struggled. Its arms were limp and the plant looked to be taking its final bow. But, the sun continued to shine and I watered and its roots sunk down deeper and deeper and now? Well, now that rock rose is thriving.

We all have a choice - live in community, let others get close and "crowd in" on our territory, put down roots and stay someplace - or be a container person - among others, but perfectly intact and untouched by the conditions of the environment they dwell in. Container people will spend time around you but never allow you to invade their space. 

Its a terrible way to live - and one can only look healthy as a container person for so long until their growth is maxed out and the container ceases to be a safe, sterile dwelling and becomes instead a vice choking them out. Then, there's a choice -  get a bigger container or risk moving into the soil.

I don't want to be a container person.

Yesterday, as I walked in my backyard, there it was, the previously container-ed rock rose, currently neighbor to the dahlias and the wildflowers and ablaze with blooms. It was as if my rock rose was saying "thank you" for freeing it to truly live.