Life Lessons from the Garden

Patience
Planting seeds and watching them grow isn't an activity that involves instant gratification, once you plant a seed you have to wait until it is good and ready to start growing. I'm very guilty of using the microwave instead of the oven or yelling at the computer because it takes two seconds longer than I think it should to open my email. Patience is a skill I need to cultivate.

Change is Okay
Sometimes a perennial will seed itself in the middle of the yard instead of inside the beautiful garden borders you have provided or a really short plant gets stuck behind a tall one and you can't see it. It's okay to dig it up and move it to a better location. I'm comfortable in my rut I have built over time and I need to remind myself it is okay to make changes to grow as a person.

Wild Onions Happen
No matter how many onion bulbs you dig up or how many different chemical treatments you use, wild onions will appear. Wild onions have taught me that sometimes you just have to go with the flow and not fret over ever little thing. Like in life stuff happens and we just have to deal with it as it comes.

Long range planning
To make sure your garden is beautiful all of the time instead of just the day you planted, it you need to think out what the garden will look like year round. Life works that way too; a little planning ahead goes a long way to smoothing out the future.

Sharing
My flowers create a lot more seeds than I need so I share the extra seeds. I've made a lot of friends and neighbors happy and I've created more friends by just simply sharing what my garden gave back to me.

Accepting Compliments
When you make an effort your gardens will be beautiful and people will notice. I've learned to say "thank you" with a big smile without doing the all shucks shrug and saying the 'It wasn't nothing to it" thing. I needed to learn how to be more gracious.

Due Diligence
Like onions, weeds happen. No matter how much time and effort you put into your garden weeds will come. You have to put due diligence into the effort of weeding to keep the weeds under control. Life has its own version of weeds and I need to keep making an effort to improve my world.

Meditation
Working in the garden is a way to connect to the God, the Universe and/or Mother Nature. I feel the need for this connection to fulfill my spiritual needs. By concentrating fully on what I'm doing in the garden I have made it a form of mediation, which makes me feel so much more peaceful inside. This is a form of meditation that I need to incorporate into my daily life.

Acceptance
Just because you put a seed or bulb or seedling in the ground doesn't mean it will grow. You have to learn to accept what happens or not happens. Life is like that too, there are consequences from my actions that I didn't anticipate that I need to learn to accept and learn to accept with grace when I do get the results I expected.

Surprises Can Be Okay
Sometimes some where along the line somebody has put the wrong label on the seed package or the wrong marker in the pot and you get a total unexpected plant growing in your yard. This has happened several times with me and sure I was disappointed when I didn't get the plant I was expecting, but usually I fall in love with the surprise plant and am glad I got it. Live sometimes brings me a surprise. Although it upsets my routine for a while, it will always work itself out.