What Season Are You In?

Yesterday, I stood in front of a room of women and asked a question: What season are you in? And people paused.

I wasn’t asking what season it is outside. I was asking something much more personal. Are you starting something? Caring for something? Waiting for something? Is there something you know it’s time to let go of? Or are you in one of those wonderful moments when something you’ve worked for, hoped for, prayed for or tended for a very long time is finally blooming?

I spend a lot of my life thinking about gardens, and I’ve come to believe gardeners understand seasons differently. We don’t walk into a garden in January and become disappointed that it doesn’t look like June. We know better. We understand there is a time to plant, a time to tend, a time to wait, a time to prune and, thankfully, a time to bloom.

Yet somehow, when it comes to our own lives, we can expect ourselves to be blooming all the time. We’re not supposed to.

Plant

Every garden begins with a little optimism. You put something into the soil today because you believe in what it might become tomorrow.

When Julie and I started Gardenuity, we certainly didn’t know exactly what it would become. We had an idea and a belief that gardening could be easier and more accessible, and that something as simple as growing a plant could help people feel better. So we planted the idea.

That’s the thing about planting seasons: there are no guarantees. It might be a new business, a relationship, a career change, a habit or simply an idea you can’t stop thinking about. You begin before you know how the story ends.

Nobody plants a seed and digs it up the next morning to see if it’s working. Yet how often do we do exactly that to ourselves? We start something and immediately begin measuring the results. Gardens remind us that sometimes we simply need to plant—and believe enough in the possibility to give it time.

Planting is an act of optimism.

Tend

Planting may actually be the easy part. Then you have to tend what you planted.

A garden rarely needs one big heroic gesture. It needs small things, consistently: water, light, attention and someone willing to show up again tomorrow. The more I garden, the more I realize how much of life works exactly the same way.

A few weeks ago, I traveled to Peru to meet the people who grow our amaryllis bulbs. I knew the bulbs were beautiful. What I didn’t fully understand until I stood in those fields was how much tending happens long before any of us ever sees the bloom.

These bulbs spend years being cared for. They’re planted, lifted, replanted and tended again, season after season. What struck me most wasn’t simply how much the growers cared about the bulbs. They cared about the land, the process and the people beside them.

By the time one of those bulbs reaches us, an extraordinary amount has already been invested in something that hasn’t even bloomed yet.

Maybe that’s what tending really is: caring before there’s applause, before there’s a result, before there’s a bloom. You care because what you’re tending matters.

I’ve come to believe that much of a meaningful life is built right there—in the tending.

Wait

And then comes the season I’m probably least talented at: waiting.

Gardening gives you very little control over time. You can’t pull on a plant to make it grow faster. You can’t negotiate with a tomato. And, as it turns out, you can’t put an amaryllis bulb on a performance improvement plan.

You can create the right conditions. You can water, nourish and pay attention. But eventually, you have to trust.

I’ve had plenty of seasons in my own life when I’ve wanted desperately to skip ahead a few chapters. As a mother, wife, daughter, friend and entrepreneur, there have been moments when I’ve wanted someone to hand me the ending and say, “Here’s how this turns out. Everything is going to be okay.”

Life doesn’t always give us that.

Sometimes we do everything we know to do. We show up, tend, love, advocate and pray. And then we wait.

Gardens have taught me that waiting isn’t an empty season. Roots can be forming before we see a single new leaf. A bulb can hold an entire flower before we see the first hint of a stem. Just because we can’t see something growing doesn’t mean nothing is growing.

Perhaps waiting isn’t the space between the important seasons. Perhaps waiting is an important season of its own.

Prune

Then there’s pruning. I have to admit, this may be the gardening lesson I’m still learning.

I’m a planter by nature. Give me a new idea, project, possibility or opportunity, and I’m generally ready to say yes. I’m considerably less enthusiastic about cutting things back.

But a garden can’t thrive if we just keep adding. And here’s what I find so interesting about pruning: we don’t only prune what’s dead. Sometimes we prune something perfectly healthy. Not because there’s anything wrong with it, but because we’ve decided where we want the plant’s energy to go.

Life has seasons like that, too. Sometimes the question isn’t, “What else can I add?” It’s, “What can I let go of so I have more room for what matters?”

I’m living this one in real time. My daughter is getting married very soon, and my natural inclination is to keep saying yes, keep working and keep adding one more thing to the list. Instead, this weekend I’m pruning. I’m saying no to some perfectly good things because I know exactly where I want my time and energy to go right now.

Maybe that’s what pruning is really about. It’s not deciding what doesn’t matter. It’s deciding what matters most in this season.

Bloom

And then, thankfully, there are seasons when we get to bloom.

I’m standing in one of those right now. My daughter Madison is about to get married, and lately when I look at her, I find myself seeing all the seasons that came before this one. The little-girl seasons. The teenage seasons. The easy ones and the really hard ones. The seasons when I wondered whether I was doing any of it right.

As mothers, we’re often so busy tending that we don’t notice what’s growing right in front of us. And suddenly I’m looking at this remarkable woman preparing to begin a family of her own and thinking, Oh. Look what grew.

Maybe that’s another lesson from the garden. When something blooms, don’t immediately ask what’s next. Stop long enough to see it. Celebrate it. Take too many pictures. Be grateful for it.

A bloom isn’t meant to last forever. That’s not what makes it sad. It’s what makes it worth noticing.

What Season Are You In?

So I’ll leave you with the same question I asked that room of women: What season are you in?

Maybe you’re planting something new and wondering whether it will work. Maybe you’re doing the quiet, largely unnoticed work of tending. Maybe you’re waiting for an answer you can’t hurry. Maybe you know it’s time to prune something good so you have room for something that matters more. Or perhaps something you’ve tended for a very long time is finally blooming.

Whatever season you’re in, don’t rush through it trying to get to the next one. A garden doesn’t apologize for its season, and neither should we.

Tend the season you’re in.

Every season has a purpose. Every season is part of the growing.

—Donna