Spring

Spring has sprung. I’m gardening again. What was once deemed “my therapy” had become another activity that I couldn’t muster doing. Why is it so easy to stop the healthy habits in our life?

Nevertheless, the need for a outlet coupled with inheriting several new plants has gotten me back in the dirt.

Goldenrod

I know this is just one woman’s opinion, but I feel strongly that yellow flowers are the happiest. They make me the happiest, at least.

As I struggle to maintain my growth mindset in the avalanche of another bout of depression, I find my garden instructive. The cyclical nature of growth and death and reseeding feel like recovery, and hell, just life. Perhaps, I wonder, as I pull out dead stems and notice the new seedlings poking through the mulch, perhaps if I didn’t fight this cycle in my life I’d be more at peace.

Coontie with scarlet salvia volunteers in the lower left.

There’s no judgment for the annual whose season is spent. The dry months are not chastised and fought against, but quietly endured. Sure, everything seems more alive when the rains of spring turn seeds and bulbs into a new round of color, but the time it took to arrive is accepted.

My favorite reseeding Florida native flower, gaillardia (aka blanket flowers).

So, I remind myself as I enjoy the beauty of this season that there’s beauty in the whole cycle that brought it. I know eventually this will end and there will be withering and death, but it’s not a failure. Just a season.

I try to soak it in and stop judging the seasons and cycles of my life when associations wither and die. When the new pops up. When the weeds must be removed. When a whole patch just won’t take root. When a tender young growth needs more nurturing than expected.

Whether good or bad, it’s just a season.

Wild coffee with sunshine mimosa growing through. I love how nature makes it’s own designs in my garden like this one.