Q: When my husband and I got married, we thought that gardening was the one thing that would keep us together. Both of us love it and each of us spent countless hours in our own gardens before we got married. Both of us were widowed years ago.
Gardening kept us somewhat sane throughout all those years when we were alone but it is not working out that way now. My husband has his own way of doing things and those are not the same ways that I have.
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We seem to argue in the garden. I love my husband and I am pretty sure that he cares about me. We don’t want our hangups in the garden to get in the way of what should be a good relationship.
Apart from closing down our garden entirely, do you have any suggestions for us?
A: The solution in some interpersonal difficulties can be found in the innocence of grandchildren. Gardening is like a form of play, so the more that you understand a child at play, the more you and your husband can resolve your challenges.
Psychologists tell us that children engage in four different kinds of play.
Solitary play is when the child plays alone, amusing himself with one or two toys.
Parallel play is when two children are engaged in a similar activity but they do not interact with each other, like playing cars in the sand box. Each child has a car and each is building roads and garages and castles but they are not doing so together.
The third is associative play. It is similar to parallel play except the children are doing exactly the same thing but still not talking to each other. An example is children watching a movie on the television.
Interactive play is when children play together, need each other to play the game and set up rules to help them play together and be considerate of each other.
Interactive play is the most complex and difficult play and can end with one child rushing home in tears.
Before you and your husband got together, each of you was engaging in solitary play in your prospective gardens. It seems that it was a useful and therapeutic activity for you and was obviously rewarding.
When you got married, you seem to have tried to jump into interactive play in your gardens and that might have been too much of a challenge for you at the time.
What would happen if you divided the garden down the middle and each of you had your own half? It could be called parallel play.
My guess is that in the fall you would have two beautiful gardens and you would both feel good about yourself.
And what a fantastic crop you would have to store in your bins for the coming winter.
