CULTIVATION AND MARRIAGE.

Communication is my strong suit only on opposite day. I know that. I know that I can be short sometimes, or just generally bad about communicating something that I'd like to say. This comes from having learned my work ethic in kitchens where mitigation is simply not efficient enough. As Dan Barber describes it in his book, The Third Plate, "[Kitchen] dialogue is curt. It skewers subtlety to get to the point... And it works. But out of the kitchen it is often difficult to regulate." And as you might imagine, this doesn't always translate well into a marriage.But communication is so incredibly important. It is awe-inspiring the havoc poor communication, or no communication can wreak on a relationship. So Hannah and I, despite how hard it is sometimes, try to talk about the things we need to talk about, even when we don't want to.Because indeed, even when it's something small, it's never easy. Especially not for me and my poor, if not downright bumbling, communication skills. But a relationship––to embrace a cliché––is very much like a garden, and the little things that don't get communicated well or go unresolved are the weeds of that garden. If you let the weeds go, the weeds take over, grow up tall, block out sunlight, drain nutrients, senesce and drop millions of other seeds you will have to deal with later on if you want to keep growing in that garden. And no garden is free of weeds. They blow in on wind, they come in on boots, and like little Johnny Appleseeds of Nature, critters like to spread them liberally. Weeds are just going to happen, even in a relationship as solid as ours.So in a garden, you would cultivate. You would preemptively nip the weeds in the bud by running a hoe through the soil after every rain. What is the relationship version of cultivation? That's a little harder to nail down. Talking often is part of it. Keeping an eye out for the moments when you can tell the other is upset by something you've done, or something you're doing. Recognizing when you're being a dummy and apologizing is important, though showing you're sorry is better cultivation technique than saying it. But––be it in a garden or relationship––it's very proactive and never-ending work. If you're going to start a garden, you're going to have weeds. Cultivation has to become part of the routine. Cultivation has to be something you do regularly, after every rain. It takes discipline. But if we've learned anything in our years farming together, it's that cultivating a garden is a heck of lot easier than weeding one.- Jesse.photo by URBAN EXODUS