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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, I currently have some really odd looking tan lines around my ankles, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share more lessons I learned from flowers.
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What I Learned Yesterday:
It’s been exactly 30 episodes since the last time I talked about my flower beds. When I first mentioned my flower beds and my neighbor with the green thumb back in episode 31, I mentioned that I was committed to the hard work and dedication it would take to keeping the plants alive and making sure the flower beds were more beautiful than they’d ever been.
It’s been nearly 3 months since I recorded that episode and I’m happy to report that not only do the flower beds look better than they ever have, I continue to learn new stuff through the process of keeping the beds looking good. Before I get into today’s story I want to let you know that some of you have asked to see pictures of my flower beds. Now, they still aren’t going to win any yard of the month club awards, but you can see a picture of my yard by going over to the website and checking out the featured image for this episode. Again, this is episode 86 of Stuff I Learned Yesterday.
I’m really enjoying taking care of my flowers. I still don’t like the planting part, but the rest of it has become quite enjoyable. I go out to look at them 4 or 5 times a day and see how they’re doing. When we started the project at back in April, we had 2 plants in our 2 flower beds. We now have about 65 plants. We’ve had 3 or 4 die along the way. I bought a few new plants last week, and before I planted some of them I tracked the sun pattern over a 7 hour period before choosing the spot I thought would be best. Obsessive? Maybe. But those plants are looking good!
Because I go out and look at the plants so often, I notice things. I notice the new growth that is emerging on nearly every plant. I notice if a plant has grown taller or has moved in a way to get more light. I notice other things like if there are new signs of bugs eating a plant or new weeds that have sprouted up. I can tell you which plants have really taken root, and which plants are still close to their original size.
But that’s not all I see when I look at my plants. I see plants that are under grown, have wilted or dying buds or stems. I see grass that has made its way into the beds and needs to be removed. I see dirt spots exposed where the mulch has gotten thin. I see dead grass that has blown over from when the lawn was mowed.
I look at the dead grass, weeds, dying stems, and underperforming plants and I don’t like it. I want the flowers to all be big and filled with blooms. I want the mulch to be pristine. I want the weeds to go away. I want the imperfections gone.
Imperfections? Really? Are those things really imperfections, or are they just the simple realities of gardening?
A week or so ago we were heading out to take a family walk around the neighborhood. I got my shoes on first and went on out to our yard. I looked over to our neighbor’s house, and Mandy was out watering her flowers. I greeted her and told her that her flowers were looking good. She returned the favor by complimenting my flowers. I told her that my flower beds were looking much better than they ever had before, but they still had a ways to go to look like hers did.
Mandy perked up and insisted that I was mistaken. She told me that she loved coming home each evening and looking over at my flower beds. As she drives down the street and gets to the spot where my house comes into view, she loves to look over and see the colors of my marigolds mixed with my petunias and geraniums. She said the mixture of yellow, dark purple, red, magenta, and orange is really beautiful. I could tell that Mandy was serious. She really enjoyed looking at the flowers and appreciated their beauty.
A few days later I was out running some errands and I made a point to come home the way that would allow me to see the view the Mandy had mentioned. I have to admit, it’s beautiful. The view from the street is much different than the view from the porch.
Here’s what I learned.
Changing perspectives is pretty valuable. Going out to my yard every day or standing on my porch to look at my flowers is good. I can gauge the progress and keep a close eye on things. I can also feed and water the plants from that position. However, it’s also easy to get caught up in the flaws from that view.
Likewise, the view from the street allows me to see the yard as a whole and it gives me the ability to see how each plant works together to compliment each other. However, I can’t feed or water the plants from the street. By the time a weed is viewable from the street, it’s had time to grow quite large.
And so it is with us. It is easy to look at ourselves in the mirror each day and only see the flaws, the things that we think keep us from looking like or being like someone else. We see our shortcomings and we see can identify our weeds.
However, we can’t just take that view of ourselves. To fully appreciate and understand the bigger picture of who we are, we need to step back, and even get the perspective of a trusted friend.
Both perspectives are valuable and true health is best achieved by incorporating both views into our life. We need to identify the weeds in our lives and be aware of the flaws. However, we can’t fixate on those things and allow them to define us. If we do, we’ll miss out on the real picture. Likewise, we can’t just take a drive by approach to our lives. We need to look close and identify things that can be improved or don’t belong so that we can take positive steps toward improvement.
I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
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