Resilience

For context, I posted about this year's delayed gardening start on the main blog: 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/07/hope-as-seed.html

Things didn't go as planned. There is still some joy. Just like life.

I planted about two dozen each of sunflower and pumpkin seeds. Three pumpkin seeds and about ten sunflowers germinated. That was not off to a good start. 

I also planted a lot of corn. That was definitely good seed; I put a few on a wet paper towel and every single one sprouted. However, a murder of crows was seen in the garden right after that, pecking away. Only one corn stalk is coming up now, that has no hopes of being pollinated. I don't mind sharing, but that felt like overkill.

Because there were such large blank spaces, I went and randomly bought any plants still available to try and fill in, even though it was late. Celery, beets, cauliflower, catnip, lettuce, and carrots withered as soon as they got in the ground. Well, the celery looked like it was going to take, but it didn't. Also, I think I saw some crows pecking the lettuce.

I also planted three packets of seeds from a mix of flowers geared for butterflies and bees. I have gotten a total of one flower from there.

And yet, things still work out. The sunflowers kept getting taller, which is great fun to watch. I have never had so many pumpkin blossoms fertilized, and never so soon after the first blossoms appeared. There are still a lot of blank spaces, but you can kind of see what I intended, especially if you focus right.

One very low point in my mother's dementia was when I gave her some petunias to plant about two years ago. That was something she loved to do year after year, and she was at a point where I thought she could have a few minutes unsupervised. In a few minutes she had uprooted every new growing sunflower and pumpkin. (I have had this vision for years, though this year is the closest I have gotten.) 

Imagine my surprise to discover a tiny petunia among the sunflowers this year.

For all her years of planting them, we have never had any self-seed. This one feels like a gift.

I was worried about if anything would have enough time to totally mature. Most of it should have gone in the ground around June 1st, and went in between July 25th and 27th. Still, things were green and cheerful and tall, so I felt pretty good. And then a hard wind blew for over a day, uprooting three of my sunflowers, including the tallest.

Well, the second tallest shot up way higher anyway, though it did it under some pretty brown, smoky skies.

I tried standing the fallen sunflowers back up, digging deeper and firming the dirt around them. It didn't matter; it was always "Timber!" and back down they would go. I knew I should clear them out, but I didn't have the heart. Those stalks still looked so strong. Then the greatest miracle of all happened.

They bloomed. I thought the comfort was going to be that even though I lost some things, I didn't lose everything. That there was still growth to look forward to.

But actually it's not just that you can bloom where you are planted. It's that even when storms knock you completely flat, and it looks like there is nothing left to do but decay, you can bloom even then.

I didn't know they could do that.

I have been thinking about how we say that God doesn't give you anything that you can't handle, but you may not be able to handle it the way you want. You handle it short-tempered and frustrated, or neglecting your own health, or doing well externally but wanting to die on the inside. And yet, you are still blooming, just not like you hoped.

Of course, the sweet potatoes were a total wash (though I have learned from my mistakes), and only half of my potatoes are growing. I am not even sure which ones, because the seed potato packages weren't labeled. They will either be bakers or mashers.

How much do we ever really know about what's next?