Last week I began choosing plants for the garden I’m making at our office in town.

It’s not any garden, it’s a naturalistic garden: it will use native plants to create something that goes beyond pleasing me as a human and instead, I hope, will please an ecosystem.

After all, being home is knowing we’re not isolated bags of bones but part of all that is.

I’m working on a spreadsheet where I’m plotting what conditions the plants like, how tall they’ll grow, when they bloom and whether the deer will eat them.

This spreadsheet will be my shopping list for the nursery that’s growing the plants. I’ll be hoping they can grow my choices.

But I’ll be holding on to my choices lightly.

The thing is, I’m working with nature here. And nature does what nature does.

Deer will browse. Plants will die. Others will try to take over the garden.

Over time, the garden will change. It will make itself—because plants grow where they want to grow.

If I’m wise, I’ll garden with a light touch. I’ll make the best choices I can, but I’ll let the garden tell me when I’m wrong.

I’ll tend and nudge, but I won’t control. Because I can’t control nature and I can’t control the world.

On some days, I see living as like a dance, a tango with reality. Sometimes I lead, sometimes I’m led. Sometimes I choreograph the dance, other times I allow the world to dance me.

Being home is being OK with what is. It’s desiring then accepting.

There’s planting, there’s weeding… and there’s allowing.