No one’s looking for cherry trees in the desert

Over the past few weeks, I’ve visited two amazing botanical gardens: the New York Botanical Garden , and Phoenix’s Desert Botanical Garden .

The NYBG had all sorts of early spring flowering trees blooming outside (think Yoshino cherries). The desert garden, on the other hand, was completely different. I wandered through acres of saguaro cacti, each silhouetted against the dusty red mountains in the distance.

Now, it is entirely possible, with some botanical creativity, to grow cacti in New York (and indeed, the botanical garden’s conservatory had a few), just as I suppose it might be possible to grow Yoshino cherries in Phoenix with some over-the-top care-taking and serious climate control.

But it wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense for either garden to make those plants their focus, or even to feature a lot of them. I wasn’t in a desert botanical garden to see azaleas. Instead, I just kept gaping at what looked, to me, like an otherworldly landscape — a completely unfamiliar beauty that was stunning all the same.

I think there’s a lesson here. Occasionally I start getting ideas of different ways I should be sharing my content. Courses! Videos! I’m not saying I’ll never do these things. But time devoted to those things is time not spent coming up with a new book idea and working on that. I truly love writing. The other stuff might be like trying to nurture a (indoor?) grove of cherry trees in the desert. It’s ok to do a little something. It’s probably not what anyone’s going to be there for.

Perhaps you, too, have some activity you particularly enjoy — or maybe something you’ve built a lot of skill or expertise in over time. We can always dabble in other things, but when people are in a desert botanical garden, they are there to see desert plants, arranged skillfully as only desert gardeners can. Best not to get too distracted.