To Prune or not to Prune

So Spring is here now, and all of our babies are waking up from their winter nap to a beautiful season. We're trying to make up for last year's mistakes and get a head start this year so we won't fall too far behind. The Lavender garden is a big project. Alex and I went out there the other day, clippers in hand, ready to rescue our dying plants. The weeds did a number on them last year, and lots of our beautiful babies were half-killed by the evil crabgrass. The Lavenders look woody and dried out, but most of them have new green growth at the very end of the old dead stuff. So she starts cutting away, snip, snip, snip, "giving them a haircut" she likes to think of it as. But me? Oh....the horror. I have a real problem with pruning in general, not to mention pruning out of season. I am so afraid that I am going to cut in the wrong spot, or too much, or not enough. I'm so afraid that I'm going to kill the very thing I love.

I panic and Alex comes over to give advice, "cut about a third, and try to leave some new shoots if you can." So I go back at it, dismayed face, telling the Lavender, and reassuring myself...."she said a third, that's the rule." It's an unreasonably stressful thing for me. I feel on the verge of tears, and have to keep taking deep breaths. Alex says, "you really have to be okay with this, it's kind of an essential part of being a gardener." I know. I know...but I feel like I'm hurting myself when I cut off all this beautiful new growth.

I feel like this plant tried so hard to survive for us last year, despite our incompetence, and the fight with the weeds, and it survived. And instead of being grateful, and happy for it, here I come along and cut it down again. But we have to. If we let it continue, it's just going to get gangly, and ugly, and not very healthy. We know pruning now might hurt the plants. Some of them hardly have any new shoots at all, but if we don't try, we're not going to be able to keep them anyway. It's a risk, and it's our fault that they are like this, and I guess that's what feels so bad. I just have to learn to forgive myself, and pray that the little bit of life left in the Lavender can forgive me too.