Last year, when the summer flowers faded and I couldn't bear the thought of the coming winter, I bought a bunch of potted mums and put them around on the back deck to keep some color and life around as the leaves fell and the days got grayer and shorter. When the cold began descending and all the plants looked like they'd given up the ghost, I piled the planters away in the garage.
When spring (finally) began unfolding, out they came again, and I began planting flowers and herbs ... my usual potted garden configuration. Those pots that didn't get re-used right away sat under the deck waiting for me to buy some new pretty new somethings to fill them.
A few busy weekends in a row, and there were about 5 neglected pots still sitting under the deck waiting for me to get out to the garden store to fill them. Then, one day I noticed a little green shoot pushing out of the dirt in one of the pots. Curious, I watched to see what was it going to do ... was it a weed? ... grass? I waited.
Over the next week or so, more sprouts shot up, and the thing started looking a lot more like a plant than a weed, and eventually, little buds started showing up all over it. By then, I'd moved it up to the deck to keep an eye on its progress. Soon, it was covered with sweet purple flowers.
I've since learned that mums are perennials, so there's really nothing magic about their ability to come back ... but I'd left it for dead and didn't do anything to encourage it back to life; I just let it be and assumed there was nothing there under the dirt.
While there are prettier flowers on the deck, and fancier pots that hold them, I've fallen in love with this tenacious little plant, largely because I could use some of its inspiration about now ... up to my neck in yet another round of growing pains (and boy, did i drag my feet on this - a deeper level of an old thing that needed attention and action, but i didn't wanna do it). I like to think that maybe on the other side of all that I'm slogging through, there's something's simmering under the surface, about to burst forth with new growth and beauty in time. Heavy on the symbolism perhaps, but still, I'm hanging on to that today.
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