Resilient flowers
If you live in the US Northeast, you are undoubtedly very aware of the severe drought we’ve been experiencing this summer. If you live in the Northeast, AND you’re a gardener, then you are hyper aware.
For the past 6 summers, I’ve cultivated a 12’ X 24’ community garden plot. I grow flowers. Some years I include a tomato plant, otherwise only flowers. Snapdragons, zinnias. calendula, celosia, dahlia, lisianthus, ageratum - pretty much any easy growing cut flower that does well in a vase. Most summers I spend many, many hours happily tending the garden plot.
This garden season started out great. June was temperate and rainy, and the flowers started to thrive. Then we hit July. Hot. Dry. Really hot. Really dry. Massachusetts releases a drought report every Thursday. We hit the “Severe drought” stage sometime in mid-July, then soon after it moved to the “Extreme drought” category.
Somewhere between “Severe” and “Extreme” I stopped watering the flowers.
The watering restrictions allow for lawn watering once a week. There were no restrictions on vegetable gardens since they provide food. While flowers certainly provide food for the soul, I just couldn’t justify using the water.
Yesterday I went to check on the garden, with the intention of cutting back what I could, in hopes that a cool spell and some rain might produce one more round of flowers before the season wraps up in about 4 weeks.
When I got there, I was shocked at how many flowers were actually blooming. Granted, they weren’t as robust as they normally would be, but they looked pretty good. Somehow they just seemed to do whatever was needed to bloom.
The word that came to mind was resilience.
How does resilience connect to creativity? Some days we experience creative flow, but many other days we have to work really, really hard to overcome obstacles in order to create. Time constraints, procrastination, self doubt - the list goes on and on.
Next time I’m feeling blocked, I’ll think about these flowers that bloomed despite all odds, and try to draw inspiration from their incredible resilience.
And you know what? Today it’s raining for the first time in about 6 weeks.