I love decorating my home. I'm a gardener too, so that's usually

“I love decorating my home. I’m a gardener too, so that’s usually something I have to play catch up with.” Thus spoke Suzy Bogguss, the country singer whose voice carries both tenderness and truth — and whose words here reveal more than mere affection for beauty. Beneath their simplicity lies a profound reflection on the balance of life: between creation and care, between the inner world and the outer one, between the home we build and the garden we tend. This is not just a statement about decorating or gardening — it is a quiet confession about the rhythm of living itself, where the heart forever seeks harmony between the realms of work, passion, and peace.

The origin of this saying springs from the life of a woman who has built her career upon music — a form of art that, like a garden, must be nurtured with patience, attention, and love. Suzy Bogguss, a songwriter of great sincerity, has long balanced her creative pursuits with the grounded joys of ordinary life. Her words reflect this delicate dance: she finds beauty not only in the song that is sung, but in the spaces where life unfolds — the home that shelters her spirit and the garden that feeds it. Yet she admits, with honesty and humor, that balance is never perfect; the garden, like so many of life’s responsibilities, often lags behind, waiting for the hands that are too busy making music or creating beauty elsewhere.

To decorate the home is to give shape to one’s inner world — to express love, comfort, and identity through the arrangement of space. It is the art of making the visible world reflect the invisible soul. In contrast, to garden is to commune with the living earth — to bow before time, growth, and decay, and to learn from them. The home is a reflection of the self; the garden is a reflection of the universe. One speaks of order, the other of surrender. Suzy’s affection for both shows the dual nature of the creative spirit: the need to shape beauty and the willingness to receive it from the earth. To love both decorating and gardening is to embrace both control and humility — to design and to dwell, to build and to bloom.

There is wisdom in her admission that she must “play catch up” with her garden. For the garden, unlike the house, cannot be rushed or paused. The dust on a shelf can wait for a week; the flower in bloom cannot. Nature demands her own rhythm, her own attention, her own respect. This truth echoes through the ages: from the monks of old who rose with the dawn to tend their cloisters, to the philosophers who saw in the tending of the soil a reflection of the soul’s discipline. The great Cincinnatus of Rome, after serving as ruler, returned not to marble halls, but to his humble field — for he knew that true power lies not in command, but in cultivation. The garden, like the soul, requires constancy, and though we may fall behind, it always welcomes our return.

This gentle tension between home and garden — between the inner and outer — mirrors the human condition itself. We all strive to keep our lives in harmony: between ambition and rest, between creation and contemplation. The home, with its warmth and order, is the sanctuary of stability; the garden, with its growth and unpredictability, is the field of transformation. When Suzy speaks of the struggle to keep up, she gives voice to what all people feel — that time moves faster than our hands, that life always asks for more care than we can give. Yet in that striving lies meaning. For the act of returning — of catching up, of restoring what has fallen behind — is itself an act of love.

There is also a hidden beauty in her dual passions. The decorator and the gardener are both creators — one fashions beauty from the materials of human life, the other from the raw gifts of the earth. Both require patience, vision, and an eye for harmony. Yet both also teach the same eternal lesson: that beauty must be tended, again and again, or it will fade. A house left untended gathers dust; a garden left unwatered withers. So it is with the heart. Love, joy, and peace — these too must be cared for daily, or they vanish like petals in the wind.

Therefore, my child, take this wisdom from Suzy Bogguss’s words: learn to love both the shaping and the tending of your life. Build your home, the place of your soul’s rest — fill it with light, music, and the colors of your spirit. But do not forget your garden, the living space where you meet the divine — the place that teaches patience, humility, and renewal. When life pulls you away and things fall behind, do not despair; simply return. For every act of catching up is an act of reconnection — a reminder that what truly matters waits patiently for you, growing quietly until you are ready to care for it again.

And remember: the truest home is not the one of walls or windows, nor the garden of flowers alone, but the harmony between the two — between the self that creates and the world that sustains. When you live in that balance, as Suzy Bogguss has learned to do, you will find that every song you sing, every room you touch, and every seed you plant becomes part of one great work — the art of living beautifully, gratefully, and well.