One year, the year of this photo, I planted a row of sunflowers to hide the farm junk that was directly in my line of sight when sitting on the front porch. I spent hours digging up the rock hard ground in 30 degree heat, adding manure, planting seeds, and watering.
Then I sat back, panting,and left them to do their thing.
Unfortunately for me, it turned out that their thing was to remain dormant in the ground all summer.
Meanwhile, back in the garden, hundreds of sunflowers began poking out of the ground where birds had dropped seeds the previous fall. In the middle of my potatoes, in the raspberries, between the squashes...sunflowers rose gloriously and majestically wherever they damn well pleased. Which did not happen to be in front of the junk heap that was in my line of sight from the porch.
Bloom where you are planted? Hmm.
Sometimes a worthy goal, no doubt, and I am not denying the wisdom in this pithy statement!
These particular sunflowers, however, seemed to be trying to teach me about how things flourish when they are in the right place.
As great as my junk barrier idea was, the sunflowers knew that that wasn't the best spot for them to grow. In fact not a single sunflower that I planted grew that year, beyond a few sickly looking seedlings that soon withered away.
Yet my garden was bursting with beautiful flowers in spots that I certainly never would have thought to put them.
We don't always have the conditions we think we need to flourish, but perhaps those conditions are not as complicated as our minds make them out to be! Our bodies and our spirits know what we need, though it's sometimes hard to hear.
Though my tendency is to replant over and over, gnashing my teeth, until the rotten flowers decide to grow where I planned for them to grow in the first place, I am going to try to keep my eyes open for beautiful things coming up unexpectedly.
Here's to a summer of unplanned beauty!
Then I sat back, panting,and left them to do their thing.
Unfortunately for me, it turned out that their thing was to remain dormant in the ground all summer.
Meanwhile, back in the garden, hundreds of sunflowers began poking out of the ground where birds had dropped seeds the previous fall. In the middle of my potatoes, in the raspberries, between the squashes...sunflowers rose gloriously and majestically wherever they damn well pleased. Which did not happen to be in front of the junk heap that was in my line of sight from the porch.
Bloom where you are planted? Hmm.
Sometimes a worthy goal, no doubt, and I am not denying the wisdom in this pithy statement!
These particular sunflowers, however, seemed to be trying to teach me about how things flourish when they are in the right place.
As great as my junk barrier idea was, the sunflowers knew that that wasn't the best spot for them to grow. In fact not a single sunflower that I planted grew that year, beyond a few sickly looking seedlings that soon withered away.
Yet my garden was bursting with beautiful flowers in spots that I certainly never would have thought to put them.
We don't always have the conditions we think we need to flourish, but perhaps those conditions are not as complicated as our minds make them out to be! Our bodies and our spirits know what we need, though it's sometimes hard to hear.
Though my tendency is to replant over and over, gnashing my teeth, until the rotten flowers decide to grow where I planned for them to grow in the first place, I am going to try to keep my eyes open for beautiful things coming up unexpectedly.
Here's to a summer of unplanned beauty!
