Planting Wildflowers

I've been meaning to write more. My buddy, Paul, helped motivate me to get back into it. Last night, I found a moment that felt inspired enough that I could write about it. Forgive my forthcoming stream of consciousness:

Randall and I purchased land from his dad this spring. One swath of land runs to the side of our property and we decided it would be a good place to create some form of "buffer" from potential future neighbors. We decided said buffer would be an orchard. Now, this land has been agricultural in nature; the farmers who leased it rotated growing crops on it, like soybeans and corn. When the land has nothing growing, we see a weed-splosion occur. In order to combat the weed-splosion, we bought this: 

Clover and wildflower seeds! The clover is native and will be good for the ground as it grows our various fruit and nut trees. It is also good for pollinators (and we have to save the bees!). However, because of the world predicament we are in (this here Time of the Coronavirus), I have turned into Scrooge. If we don't need it, we are not spending any money on it. So, while we talked about wildflowers back in January, a few weeks ago Randall said he was going to buy the seed for the patch along the road. "Maybe next year?" I offered. "It seems like an unnecessary expense right now." He said that's one way to look at it, then followed up: "but think of the joy we will provide to anyone driving by who sees the cheery patch of flowers." Ok. "Think of the joy you get every time you see flowers." He's not wrong.* So we bought the wildflower seed. And I already experience great amounts of joy just thinking about the flowers.

Knowing it was going to rain over the next several days, Randall and I tilled the land in order to spread the layer of seeds. Randall and I had already used the tractor a few weeks back to turn over the soil. So as the daylight hours slipped away, Randall and I feverishly completed the task of planting seeds. Ok, I just did some tossing of seeds and a few light raking motions to cover them up. But we got the field planted.

Look! Look at this! Ok, ok. Right now it looks like patchy dirt. But while Randall and I were sowing seeds, a thought dawned on me. We are sowing hope. We plant for the future. We don't know what the future will hold (in this case, we hope it is a field of wildflowers), but our efforts are for the future.

So I offer this thought: we are living in a world of uncertainty right now (completely off topic, but if I hear the word "unprecedented" one more time, I might stab someone). Maybe it feels like we are living in an abstract place of patchy dirt. Maybe it is difficult to see through the weeds. But we keep working toward a future that holds things like wildflowers. We keep educating children for their brighter future. We keep being kind to others because that's the type of world where we want to live. We keep living, taking each day as it comes knowing that we can't change that these days continue to come, we can only do our best with them. Ultimately, there is still a future and even if it feels like a vast space of tilled-up dirt right now, we can still hold on to hope. Hang in there and stay well, my friends.

*Actually, often my handsome husband knows more about me than I do. In this case, he preemptively offered me a season of feeling grounded in my garden.