A Life Lesson Learned From Growing A Garden
Beginning our Garden Inside
We began this year with around 60-70 starter plants inside our living room. The plants sat on shelves of a heavy duty metal shelving unit next to our south facing wall of windows. Needless to say, they got plenty of sun and half of the starters grew out of their plastic cups to larger, black plastic planters.
As the plants grew so did Roy and my pregnant belly. When May came around I was eagerly anticipating the arrival of our second son and putting all of these starter plants into our garden. Henry finally came on May 23 and exactly one week later all of our plants were in the ground. My husband, Harrison, was amazing and set up a drip line for the garden AND transferred all of my plants for me while I was recovering.
After tedious seed planting to months of watering each little cup daily, we finally began to look forward to our work paying off come harvest time. That was until the first hailstorm hit. . .
What We Thought Was The End
Boy did it hit us good. I remember all of us sitting in the kitchen just listening to the hail pound our metal roof and see the ground fill with white, nickel sized hail. Harrison and I didn’t step into the garden for the next 2 days. We were too devastated to even see the damage done. After months of prep and Harrison working hard for a week straight to set up that drip line, we thought it was going to be all for not.
Harrison’s parents came over to help with the cleanup and we set up hail protection for future storms. As we cleaned our way through the garden, it felt like we were cutting off plant after plant, vine after vine. Only 10 of the original starter plants had survived.
Luckily, Lisa, Harrison’s mom, had also been growing starter plants and gave me a few tomato and cucumber plants to replace our destroyed ones. My mom helped replace a few zucchini and squash plants which helped revive our garden and our spirits.
The Lesson We Learned
Now looking back on the past seven months, we have truly been blessed with our garden harvest. Harrison and I both thought that after the hail storm, the garden was over. However, our families helped us pick up our broken stems, prune back the damage done, and help us plant new seeds and new growth to fill the holes that were made.
I hope that when life just throws hail stones at you, you pick up your pruners and have the courage to face the damage done and clear out your ‘garden.’ It was so hard to pull out those plants we spent months caring for, but we had to get rid of them so newer ones could have a chance to grow. I believe trials come in our lives so that we can stop, take a moment and evaluate our life. What do we need to stop doing? Start doing? Who is our major influence? If you don’t like where you are in life, then roll up your sleeves and get rid of the distractions or relationships that are keeping you from where you want to be.
If we had kept those broken plants there, hoping they would change and start growing again, we would have been here in October with zero vegetables. How many times do we hope something will be different in our lives, that something will change?! And then we refuse to change. I hope this encourages you to get rid of what is holding you back. To prune away the distractions or influences that are keeping you from your greatest potential. I promise that with just an ounce of courage to face and fix what damage has been done, unimaginable blessings await you on the other side.
