It’s both thrilling and unsettling to start something new.  If I give myself enough time I can usually talk myself out of it.  Train to run a 5K?  Nah, I’ll probably break an ankle or something.  Join a Facebook group with thousands of strangers?  Nope.  I’m an introvert.  Work a full time job and start a side business, too?  Can’t.  I’ve got to sleep sometime.  It’s easy to find reasons to keep wallowing in the same old rut.  But the truth is, we don’t know what we can accomplish until we give it a whirl.

Take a flower garden, for example.  The thought of rows and rows of flowers gets me pretty excited  in the winter when everything outside is a mild, harmless shade of grey or brown.  But then, on a warm day in late May when I’m standing beside a freshly plowed piece of earth, seed packets spilling out of my hands, it’s an entirely different matter altogether.  Things will get downright dicey come July or August when the weeds are knee high, the sun is hot, and there are exactly two things on my mind:  ice cream and air conditioning.

The truth is, anything worth doing is going to take a lot of work, a lot of learning, plenty of persistence, and some good old-fashioned grit.  New ventures are often accompanied by equal parts anxiety and delight.  We’ve all got to put in our quota of sleepless nights.  Sometimes there aren’t any shortcuts, because beautiful things require time to develop.

Gardening is a lot of hard work, and if I’m honest, I regularly find myself very willing to hand the whole weedy mess over to someone else.  But I’m realizing more and more that I’ve learned some lessons about life through my efforts in the garden.

Enjoy the process

I’m as guilty as anyone of trying to rush through my day looking for shortcuts and the easy way out.  In the garden, results can take a while to show up.  Sometimes it takes several months to get from seed to flower.  For me, gardening has been a good antidote for impatience and a healthy way to learn to stick to a task and see it through.  I’m learning that the process is sometimes just as much fun as the end goal.  I can even enjoy monotonous chores like planting or weeding if I listen to a podcast or an audio book.

Notice the seasons

When you’re in the garden day in and day out, you see those subtle shifts of each season, the gradual changes that take us from a bland brown landscape to vibrant spring green or the shift from tired summer foliage to that first flaming leaf in September.  Gardening is like a front row seat to an incredible show.  I’m beginning to appreciate those rhythms and patterns.

Win some, lose some

I suspect that if you’re going to be any kind of a farmer, you’ll need to grow a very thick, extra tough sort of skin.  It’s easy to get attached to things, ideas, dreams, little plant babies, lists of things you can accomplish in a season.  But things don’t always work out.  An unfortunate heat wave may blow open all your peonies before you can harvest them, it might rain for days on end in the spring and turn everything into sludge, or your carefully constructed low tunnel might catch an unfortunate south wind and turn into a giant heap of plastic in the rose patch.  There will be disasters, but in the end, things usually work out.  Sometimes a disappointment will lead you in an entirely new direction and you’ll discover things you didn’t think were possible.

Disasters can be a kindness in disguise.  If we get too attached to our ideas and theories, there isn’t a lot of room for improvement and growth.  The best ideas and inspirations have come about when we’ve had to regroup after a catastrophe.  A lack of easy to grow foliage has taught us to think outside the box and take a second look at the trees and bushes growing around us.  Much to his chagrin, even Dad’s apple trees have encountered the occasional speculative eye.

Smell those roses

Yes, actually take time to practice that overused phrase.  There’s a good reason it’s overused.  Flowers and gardens are a lot of work, but on the other hand, they’re a little bit of heaven, too.  It doesn’t matter how busy I am, I’ll always have time to stop and stuff my nose into a rose or smell the sweet peas.  I’m fascinated with the velvet on lamb’s ear leaves and the hair on a poppy head.  The details in the natural world are astounding.  I believe God put them there to call us back to Him, and one of the easiest place to worship is a garden.  It’s good to work hard, but I’m also learning to take a step back occasionally and see just how much we’ve accomplished.

I used to see gardening as a way for me to change the world, well, at least my small corner of it.  Now I’m realizing that it’s become a catalyst for changing me, a way to learn rhythms and disciplines that are easy to miss in a world that goes by in a frantic whirl.  I think the earth would be a much better place if we all took the time to stop and do a little gardening.

Rosita