Bloom Where You're Planted

yep, that's this years garden!

I don’t garden. Shocking but true. Just add it to a long list of things I don’t do:  I don’t sew. I don’t pintrest. I don’t play Martha Stewart and… I don’t garden. It’s not that I can’t. And it’s not that I won’t. And it is certainly not something I have never done. Because I have. Some of them have been successful. That one year the tomato yield alone was enough to supply salsa for most of East County. That was a good year! And Zucchini? Who can’t grow zucchini? Um... Apparently me, because the following year not even the long necked green squash grew under my attentive care.

One year we didn’t have time to work in the garden. By the time we finally got around to it, we found ourselves planting on the 4^th of July. Isn’t that when corn’s supposed to be knee high? Well, whatever. We planted late. Then we suffered an early frost and everything shivered to death on the vine before we could harvest it.

As I said, I don’t garden.

But I could. Early in our courtship, my husband wrote me a love letter in which he outlined things he was looking for in a woman. He listed gardening. A-hah. He wanted a woman who could garden? I’d be that woman! (He also listed darning socks but I’ve managed to finagle my way out of that one!) I was happy to don bib overalls and walk barefoot in the cool damp earth, dropping seeds into carefully prepared mounds of dirt. Ah, it was one of my finer moments.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against gardening. In fact, there’s something to be said for getting down on one’s knees and digging in the soil. (There’s something else to be said about getting back up but whatever.)  It just seems that gardening takes a special touch and, these days, I don’t seem to have it.

I can plant however! I love going to Home Depot and buying trays of pretty flowers and bringing them home to transplant into happy little pots to line up on my deck. This seems to work well for me. I sit outside watching my pretties bloom and I smile.

A few years ago, when I was a self employed business woman, the “Bloom Where You’re Planted” quote was very popular. I had never pictured myself running my own business but there I was, and doing it pretty well if I say so myself. It was hard work; long hours and much sacrifice but as the business grew and thrived, I did too. My self confidence grew tremendously during that time, as did my spiritual maturity. I knew God had planted me in the world of women’s fitness as a way to share my faith while encouraging women. About two years into the venture however, I hit a snag and things began to unravel a bit. That is when the bloom felt like it was fading and as year 2 slipped into year 3, I didn’t find the idiom of blooming where I was planted quite so cute and charming anymore. I switched my mantra for the next couple of years to a verse from Galatians that said, “Let us not grow weary while doing good…” Weary was the word all right and I prayed daily to be released from my role. Eventually that chapter was completed and I was free to move on.

For all my disparaging remarks about gardening, I do love the parallels between growing things in the soil and growing things in our hearts and souls. I look back over the many challenges I have faced in my life and recognize the many seasons I have gone through. Just as there were some good years in the garden, years that yielded good fruit, so there have been in my personal life. Drought and blight can and do descend, even when we are most diligent so finding ways to overcome are important. 

Just as I switched from trying to maintain a large garden plot to managing smaller containers, I’ve undertaken that in my own personal life also. Now, when I look out at my deck lined with its bright splashes of color bursting out of clay pots, I see happiness and joy. I hope that when you look at my life, you see the parallels. 

living on the deck, one grateful moment at a time. 

thanks to Suzanne A. for this weeks writing prompt: gardening.