- just a little encouragement and perspective -

​

She is a gardener.

She plants and waters, feeds and weeds.

She is curious.

She reads and learns and studies the science of growing things.

She observes, explores, and experiments like a botanist, playing in her laboratory of living things.

She notices the slightest change in color and condition of the soil.

She loves the process, not just the result, and it’s made her an explorer of the world.

She checks on her little shoots, even when they don’t necessarily need anything.

She shows up when she’s tired or cranky or sick.

She’s there after a storm or when she returns from a trip.

She is nurturing and resilient.

She speaks to her plants. Gently, of course. One would never shout at a plant. What good would that do?

They turn their faces toward the sun and dance in the breeze.

The gardener has learned patience with time, her gentle teacher.

Gardening, you see, is a practice in waiting. For nightfall, for the sunrise, for the harvest to come.

Through long winters, and dry summers, and fruitless crops altogether.

The rains fall, the hail destroys, and the sun restores.

There is no one who loves her garden as much as she does,

for they did not plant it and they do not tend to it.

They might enjoy it, admire it, marvel at it even. They might ignore it.

Some don’t really care about growing things, she muses, and that’s okay.

Only the hands that have touched a leaf unfurling like a hand slowly opening

to praise the sky can love it like she does.

Only the brow that has been beaten by the sun while pulling weeds

to protect her burgeoning blossoms can really marvel at their becoming.

Only the heart that has leapt at the first sprouted seed

or the thrill of a second bloom can truly know the wonder of her own garden.

We are the gardeners of souls and the sowers of morrows.

We are the holders of tears and the keepers of dreams.

We are the whisperers of moon-dipped prayers and the protectors of ripening hearts.

We are the gardeners, planting seeds of intention

and watering them with small acts of love and attention every single day.

Look at your calloused hands from long days of invisible work.

Look at your creased eyes from living and loving under a thousand suns.

​

The gardener is you.

By Ainsley Arment