My new neighbor Paula likes to garden.  I suppose, in a broader sense, you could say she likes to fill spaces with beautiful things.

I think it’s about more than being out in the sunshine, practicing her squats and digging in the dirt; about handling tools while wearing an apron.  It’s about more than considering the size of a space and what kinds of plants are on sale at Home Depot.

For the first few weekends, when I saw her around the building, it always seemed she had a small spade in her hand and was trying to get something in the ground before the next spring thunder shower.  I admired her industriousness. And yes, I liked the idea of having bushes and ferns and a colorful variety of flowers and ground cover grow just outside my windows without having to supply the labor myself.

I had to wonder Who does she do it for? Why does she do it?

She was away on a business trip when the irises came up. She doesn’t stop planting and tending to her seedlings after filling the last flower box on her deck. She has taken considerable time to make the neighborhood more welcoming and inspire her neighbors to enjoy being outside more.

She even planted a few tall yellow flowers and some bushes along the fence that separates our alley from the train tracks.  I don’t normally think of anything growing along this short, narrow corridor.

Maybe the people in our building only appreciate this special landscaping when we are sitting on our back decks while a train rumbles by.  I doubt that the people on passing trains notice the brief blur of colors while they pass our building. But I have really taken to the notion that something beautiful fills the space.

And even though I prefer simplicity as a decorating philosophy (I positively get itchy nervous when people feel compelled to fill every inch of a wall with a print or etching), I really like the idea of creating and caring for greenery in unexpected places.

It’s a metaphor we could all adopt to a greater extent. Maybe each of us has special talents or even callings that are very individual.  But all of us could consider making whatever space we fill or touch somehow better by giving our best energies, by consciously deciding how we want to fill that space.

There’s no such thing as wasted space if someone is consciously engaged in deciding what to put in that space.

I love looking out from my office window or from my back deck, beyond the parking area and alley and seeing the little strip of three stubby evergreens and a few flowers along the train fence.

Remembering that each of us can determine how we want to fill the spaces around us is no small thing.