Tina and I are about to celebrate our anniversary this week. And of course we have some very Dean and Tina things planned, including getting lost for a few hours in a very famous very beautiful garden. So in keeping with our theme of trees and gardens, I want to return for a moment to the concept of having a green thumb and what it takes to tend a garden, and how that so very much relates in my thinking to what it takes to grow a relationship.Great relationships, like great gardening, require a great respect for the other. Everything in the garden is a relationship born of desire and admiration, and grown with respect. Why have a garden to begin with if there is no desire to surround oneself with beauty? A beautiful flower, a handsome tree, we have them near us because we like having them near. The first step in the path to becoming the gardener of a particular plant is to decide if you like it. Loving someone is a wonderful, necessary thing. But it’s entirely possible to love someone without wanting to spend a lot of time with them. So no, love is not all you need. You need to like. Liking is the key to an intimate, thriving relationship. Like is the secret sauce of our relationship. Tina and I are together a lot. Most of the time. What keeps it fresh is that every day we fall back in like with each other. And we both put in the work to remain likable. All gardens are born of desire. To want to tend a garden you have to like what’s in it.Great relationships, like great gardens, require a real understanding of the other’s needs and a willingness to do your part in meeting those needs. That’s where most gardeners fail to earn their green thumb. Mastering the care of a plant isn’t simply learning to impose your will upon it. It takes little to no knowledge of a thing to impose your will. If when you look at a garden you think your seeing nothing but a human’s will, then you’re not seeing the garden for what it truly is … a partnership, a dance. A great relationship, like a great garden, is the manifestation of two wills, two sets of needs, both satisfied and fused into one expression. Great relationships, like great gardens, require a deep desire for the other to prosper, thrive, and bloom.Finally, great relationships, like great gardens, require regular attention. Returning to the origin of the green thumb—a thumb literally stained green from constant handling—the most beautiful gardens, like the most beautiful relationships, are not made so by grand gestures, or occasional acts of heroism. Beautiful gardens and beautiful relationships are testimonies of green thumbs. The kinds of thumbs permanently stained green by a thousand tiny and tender acts of daily attention.That is what’s required of something that’s always growing and always changing. Regular attention. Change is the very nature of living things. Living things, like the plants in a garden or the people in a relationship, do not stop growing and changing. Your choice is whether you’ll be there close by to grow and change together, or walk away too often for too long only to discover that growth and change has continued without you, and that nature and time has begun to erase the imprint of your hand in the art.Some of you have noticed at the beginning of each show when I introduce Tina I’ve never referred to her as my wife. That’s true, and also very intentional. It’s not that I have anything against the institution of marriage. It’s just that there’s something far more important to me about our relationship than our being married. The most important thing that Tina is to me is what I say every week. She is my best friend. Friendship is not contractual. It’s not an obligation. Friendship, like a garden, is born of desire and grown with constant attention and respect. I never wake up in the morning wondering how I’m going to be a better husband. I wake up, ready to pull on my boots and get out into that garden, only wondering how today I might be a better friend....
