A Year of Gratitude – June 11, 2024

This time of year, the gardens seem to grow my gratitude. I don’t remember a day in the last month, perhaps longer, that I didn’t see something in the garden that gave me a reason to be grateful.

Perhaps that is why gardeners love to garden so much. The work is difficult. The weather is often unkind. Garden pests are as named, pests that make the work of growing anything more difficult. Yet I can’t imagine not gardening.

While the work is difficult and some years deliver more heartbreak than I would like, gardening feeds my soul. I’m literally planting beauty to be enjoyed today, tomorrow, and years from now. There just aren’t that many activities that allow me to do that.

It helps that I work these gardens with the people I love. Our hands work together to make the lifting a bit lighter. Mostly, we work together to make this patch of earth more beautiful, to make the place that we live together filled with more wonder and beauty.

When I look at these poppies, I don’t just see pretty flowers, although they are gorgeous. I also see the memories in my head of my mom planting them here. I remember when we would see a single bloom and be so delighted by its uniqueness. I remember showing those early blooms to my children when they were little and watching their eyes widen when they looked inside those salmon colored petals.

So, I am grateful for these blooms, the garden that nurtures them, and the hands that have tended them. They’re the hands of people I love. I am so thankful that I’ve been able to be a part of adding more beauty into our world here on the farm and that I have the amazing opportunity to share it with you.

This post is part of our A Year of Gratitude Series. You can find the introduction, inspiration, and entire year’s gratitude’s posts here.