Spring advice: Take your time and bloom

Spring is in the air — except when it’s 10 degrees at night and we have to turn the heated waterers back on for the chickens and the goats. Hopefully soon spring is here to stay.

A few weeks ago my husband pulled the cooler out of the garage so Jo could put some eggs outside for one of her regular customers. We affectionately call them “rEGGuglars”. 

When I opened the cooler, I was surprised to see it empty. I asked my husband what he did with the daffodil bulbs I put in there. He kind of rolled his eyes at me and told me that he left them in the garage. 

I purchased the bag of bulbs late last summer and was so excited to be ready to plant another 100 bulbs in the front yard. I have a goal to turn our front yard into a field of daffodils of all varieties. 

There is just something so inspiring about those yellow and orange beauties springing up from the cold earth. They bring the promise of new life budding forth from the dark and cold winter. My Dad used to bring us to a park covered in daffodils. I can still remember the intoxicating smell and the vivid waves of yellow. 

In years past, life got in the way. The fall of 2020 was the first year I was actually able to plant some spring bulbs. The pandemic slowed us down and focused our efforts at home building Jo’s Farm. 

Last fall,  I was ready to add even more bulbs to get closer to my goal of a sea of yellow flowers greeting us in the spring. I read up on how and why I needed to wait until just before frost to plant the bulbs. I left the bag sitting out in the front garden ready to plant. 

At some point, my husband asked me why there was a bag of potatoes in our front yard. He’s not much of a gardener and doesn’t peel potatoes very much either. I defended my plans to plant and he just shook his head and left the bag.

Just before the first snow, I remembered my poor bulbs sitting out in the cold. I  attempted to dig some holes to plant. But the freezing cold outside was reflected in the frozen soil. Instead, I tossed the daffodil bulbs in the cooler in the garage to protect them from a freeze. 

These simple bulbs and all things spring have started me thinking about how much my day-to-day life is reflected in nature. Observing nature and being out in creation prompts me to give myself permission to do what I can to take care of myself. 

It’s not always easy to do that as a family caregiver especially when family members are chronically ill and/or require daily care. But it is essential for all of us — even those who aren’t taking care of others.

It seems that the pandemic forced people to slow down and assess priorities. It also was a huge source of stress on the mental health of children and adults alike. 

Still, stories of strength and hope have arisen from this difficult period of our history.

But I have noticed something in myself and in other friends too. We are back to our ways of doing so much with so little time. Maybe it’s because we feel like we are making up for time lost in the shutdowns? 

We are balancing events and schedules and trying to integrate them into new routines. I hear from parents running busy schedules with kids, balancing work outside and inside the home trying to do it all- only faster. 

Maybe we feel like we need to make up for lost productivity in the shutdowns? Certainly, some businesses do — especially the ones that barely survived. Still I would hope that we could remember to give ourselves time to slow down and make time for ourselves.

When I grabbed that bag of daffodil bulbs off the garage floor, the self-talk in my head wanted to chastise me for wasting time and money and for not doing enough. But the woman I have become in this pandemic time is older and wiser and tries to give myself more grace and less stress.

I whispered to my worried self, “You are enough. You do enough. Take your time and start again another day.”

Just then I noticed — the bulbs were sprouting inside the cooler! 

Green stems held the promise of yellow blooms pushing up from within the naked bulbs.

I took them out of the bag and cleaned up some containers outside and added more soil. On one of those unseasonably warm days, Jo and her aide planted the bulbs in the containers filled with soil. Even if they are too shocked from hanging out in the garage to bloom this spring, there’s hope for replanting the daffodils in the soil next fall. 

After Jo planted the bulbs, we talked about the need to give ourselves the time to accomplish our goals and start over when necessary. Jo said, “As a medically fragile adult, I have to do this all the time- I start again.”  Jo and I were both encouraged by this lesson from nature this spring.

So now we watch and wait to see if our container garden will yield yellow flowers. We are giving those bulbs a second chance to bloom and ourselves a chance to start again. 

You should too. 

You are enough. 

You do enough. 

Take your time and bloom.