One thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is how much gardening and flower farming have taught me about patience. I don't think I fully appreciated it until this year, but growing flowers is really just one long lesson in waiting. It starts long before there's anything green outside. In the middle of winter I'm already dreaming about summer, ordering seeds and planning where everything will go. Then in late winter I start the seeds indoors and every day I'm checking on them, hoping they've germinated, wondering if they're growing fast enough, trying not to overwater them, and imagining what they'll look like a few months down the road. There's so much potential packed into those tiny little seedlings, but there's not much you can do except give them what they need and wait.
When planting day finally arrives in late May, it feels like such a milestone. This year I planted most of the garden on May 24th, and it felt like I'd finally made it. But really, that was just the beginning. The weeks that followed were full of hand weeding, watering, watching the weather, and wondering if everything was doing what it was supposed to do. Every day I'd walk through the rows looking for new growth, comparing one variety to another, wondering why some flowers seemed so slow and whether I'd done something wrong. Gardening has a funny way of making you question yourself.
Then all of a sudden it's August, and without really noticing when it happened, the garden feels full. The rows that looked so empty a couple of months ago are overflowing with flowers, the buckets start filling up after every harvest, and the work shifts again. Right now it's all about harvesting, drying flowers, and trying to keep up with everything that's blooming. It's busy, and honestly a little overwhelming at times, but it's also the reward for all those months of waiting. The funny thing is that this season doesn't last very long. Before we know it the mornings will get cooler, first frost will arrive, and we'll be putting the garden to bed for another year.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that so many of the best things in life are like that. Building our family certainly has been. There's waiting to get pregnant, waiting through the first trimester, waiting for the anatomy ultrasound while hoping and praying everything looks healthy, waiting for morning sickness to finally pass, waiting to find out the baby's gender, and then waiting to finally meet this little person you've been imagining for months. Even after they're born, every stage feels like another season of waiting. Waiting for first smiles, first steps, first words. It's exciting, but you can't rush any of it.
I also realized this year how used I've become to getting answers instantly. If I have a question, I Google it. I ask ChatGPT. I watch a YouTube video. When my strawflower seedlings looked a little strange this spring, I uploaded photos to ChatGPT more times than I'd like to admit. It suggested diseases, nutrient deficiencies, maybe even pesticide drift. I spent way too much time worrying that something was seriously wrong.
In the end, do you know what the answer actually was?
I just had to wait.
The plants kept growing. They figured themselves out. Most of the things I was worried about never became problems at all. Looking back, I think I was trying to skip over the part where experience is built. Gardening isn't just about getting the right answer every time. It's about paying attention, making mistakes, learning what works in your own garden, and remembering those lessons next season. No amount of research can replace that.
I think that lesson applies to so much more than gardening. We spend so much time trying to plan everything, solve every problem before it happens, and figure out exactly what the future will look like. I know I do. I think about flowers, work, family, and all the things I want to accomplish. But sometimes there isn't anything left to do except keep showing up, do today's work well, and let time do the rest.
Maybe that's one of the reasons I love gardening so much. It forces me to slow down in a world that's constantly speeding up. We live in a time where almost everything is instant. We can order almost anything with a click, find answers in seconds, and fill every spare minute with social media or another little hit of dopamine. Gardening doesn't work like that. It reminds me that some things simply can't be rushed, and honestly, I think that's good for us.
So for now I'll keep watering, weeding, harvesting, and enjoying this busy little season while it lasts. Before long the garden will be covered in snow again, and somehow I'll already be looking through seed catalogues, ready to start the whole process over. And I think I'll appreciate the waiting a little more next time.
