How does your garden grow?

Garnet basking in my Grandmother's Garden

My garden, is not really MY garden.

My garden is my Grandmother's garden.

I've had the good fortune to wind up owning the home my Grandparents retired to after 50 years of dairy farming. It is a modest home, in a wonderful village - with a sense of community that is second to none.

We moved here in June of 2005, following the passing one of the greatest human beings I will ever know. My Grandmother, my friend - Margaret Chapman.

That summer was chaos - I did my best not to kill her flowers and my best to keep my toddlers alive too.

A few years later I found what I thought might be peony "bushes" (in quotes because they were so so so sad, not bushes at all) in the back yard. Their roots were encased in thick clay(ish) soil and in the shade. In the 3 years we had lived there they had never flowered or even attempted to. So naturally, I moved them. They landed in the garden that lines my driveway behind an adorable stone wall.

I planted them. They took. And year after year they came up, produced leaves and then......nothing. No buds. No flowers. Nada.

The years passed. I considered pulling them out and replacing them with something else. However, I liked the simplicity of their plumage - their leaves green all summer and blushing in the autumn.

Just as soon as I decided I was okay with peonies that never flowered -  7 years after I transplanted them - I got my first petite buds! That year I got a few small flowers, and some buds that didn't do anything. With each successive year they have become stronger and more hardy and the blossoms are now showstoppers!  They are stunning to look at and their fragrance heady.

So I moved onto a different plant that was not flowering. My irises. I noticed that the rhizomes were really too close to the surface of the soil, they were just sitting there - mostly exposed to the elements. They had become so enmeshed there was no room for air or nutrient flow. I dug them up, broke them apart, tilled the soil and replanted them with space to groove.

And there they sat. Spring came, and the stately sword-like greenery did as well. The blossoms did not.

For 3 springs, nothing.

Spring 2016 is here and guess what? I have irises! Yes, I do.

So here is where I say something about life...because how can I not.
I was outside weeding and pulling out sticks from my 'winter garden' as Amy Chess and I like to call it.
I was thinking rather deeply as I tend to do (it's a gift and a curse, trust me), and something sort of struck me.

There are all kinds of way we get stuck. Sometimes we are stuck because our roots are not where they need to be. We aren't getting something we need to flourish so we aren't at our best. That could look like a lot of things. In the wrong job, the wrong relationship, stuck in a loop of harmful habits, or just plain unwilling to see that staying put makes us stagnant.

Sometimes we are stuck because we are too crowded. That might mean taking space and time for what makes us tick, what enriches us - so we can breathe and grow and be better than we were yesterday or last season or last year.

I feel a little like the peony and the iris for different reasons.

I hope to keep doing the things that propel me to grow and blossom a little more lavishly, a little more strong, a little more bright every day.