Growing, Pruning, & Unintentional Discovery

I promised to keep you updated on my planting project, so here it is.

Just over two weeks post seed planting day, we have some lovely plants

and we have some lovely dirt.

I actually have two kinds of plants that have taken off incredibly.

Our pumpkin plants: (It may be hard to tell, but the orange container is a full size planter.)

And our sunflowers:

As you can tell I've had to repot both of these. I knew that we had planted 10-12 seeds of each in those small pots that came with the kit. I didn't realize that it was possible ALL of them might sprout into plants. It's my nature to try to do it all - so I quickly realized I was going to have to separate and repot each of the small individual plants.

From what I've read, an experience gardener would have pruned instead of trying to save them all and only saved the hardiest handful. I don't like that. That's not my nature. I want to keep every single last one of them. "Pruning" seems like a waste, but I have a feeling I'm going to learn better as I become more experienced. Even the Bible tells us of the wisdom in pruning.

If I didn't want to prune, my boys pruned in the wrong way. One afternoon this week, the boys were playing in the other room and I was working in my office. Riley came in and said, "Mommy, I threw dirt all over the den. I'm really sorry." I sent him to his room and went to see exactly what he was talking about. When I walked into the room, Colt was gleefully digging into one of my sunflower plant pots and throwing handful after handful of dirt all over the room. There was dirt on the tv, in the sofa, on top of the mantle . . . I think it even came flying down from the top of the ceiling fan blades when we turned it on. My poor plants were lying in shock around the room bereft of all nutrition and shelter. It was a sad moment. I couldn't believe the boys had done that after specifically being told not to touch Mommy's plant. Obviously, I still haven't learned my lesson about having too high of expectations for my almost 2 and 3 year old.

When Mommy rescued what she could, this was what was left . . .

I am still learning lots from my gardening undertaking. I am the kind of person who wants to take it all on and keep it all going. I don't like to prune out activities, relationships, goals, desires, anything - to the detriment of my emotional and spiritual life and to the detriment of my family.

If I don't prune, all of my plants will end up being weaker. But if I (or my boys) prune incorrectly it makes a mess and destroys almost any hope that the plant will ever grow successfully.

I've been surprised that some of the plants I expected to grow have never sprouted. I've been surprised at how incredibly some of the plants have taken off. I'm still waiting to see what will happen with others. It makes me sad when even one of my little plants doesn't make it. I was crushed when my large collection of sunflowers was decimated by my little ones - all the time and attention wasted, it seemed.

It's crazy that the plants have all received the same treatment, while some have grown immensely and others are completely dormant and possibly dead. Guess this plant thing is alot like relationships.

But overall my garden is a success. I can't focus on the small losses - or even the larger one - and ignore how well everything else is doing. It wouldn't be helpful and it wouldn't be accurate.

Joey's supposed to get a truckload of dirt next weekend so that we can turn the back end of our yard into a large flower bed to plant all of our seedlings in. I'm excited to see how that goes and how much better all of the plants do when they have more room to spread their roots and grow.

Stay tuned . . .