They are great opportunities for connection
In Colorado planting day for a garden is any time after Mother’s Day. Any earlier and things get frozen. I thought it would be great to use all the free seeds I had been given over the course of the spring and make a wildflower garden in my back forty. It’s an 8 foot wide plot of land behind my house that backs up to the canal system here. I thought this was a fun way to use all the many seeds I had and make this eyesore of a place beautiful. (Enter eyerolls and loud laughter here.)
My husband and I went out with a pitchfork and a pickaxe to turn over the land and dig a trough for a flush with the ground border. Yes, he was totally humoring me and supporting my vision of beautiful flowers sprouting up in a month or so. After we got the land turned over, pulled out many pounds of rocks and some debris, I spread my wildflower and sunflower seeds all over the plot. I diligently watered them daily. And two weeks later there was nothing. And three weeks later there was still NOTHING, only a few little weeds. It was an epic gardening fail!
I was so disappointed. How could absolutely nothing sprout?!? They’re wildflowers for pete’s sake. They’re supposed to grow anywhere…right?!? Wrong! I had failed to prepare the plot well. The dirt was not good. It was home to weeds, grass clippings, some trash, pine needles, lots of dried clay and lacked nutrients. All the wishful thinking in the world was not going to turn that mess into soil that would grow something.
Take 2. I went to the store and bought more seeds. I thought the free ones must have been faulty (enter 2nd set of eyerolls). I went back out to my little plot of dirt with the pitchfork again to go deeper, wider and more thorough. You know kind of like the doc does on a suspicious spot. This time I turned the dirt over down to about a foot deep. I discovered there was a lot more trash hiding under the dirt that needed to be removed. I was a human tiller. I picked out more rocks from golf ball size to pecan size and threw them into the river rock bedding. I used all the leftover plant fertilizer in our garage (yes, I was trying to do this on the cheap) and turned it into the dirt hoping it would become soil.
I carefully planted all the seeds in little holes at the appropriate depth for each type of seed and covered them with dirt. Then the watering and praying started. Two and a half weeks later the first sprouts came up. I was thrilled. No matter what something was trying to grow there and even if only 1 flower came up it was better than absolutely nothing. Over the next weeks more sprouts showed up and a few weeds. And now two and a half months later I have beautiful sunflowers, budding colorful cosmos, several other flowering plants, and a couple of weeds growing in my little wildflower garden.
I felt redeemed. I should have known better. Lack of preparation would result in poor outcomes. Hmmm…there must be a lesson in here 😉. It’s happened before. Getting an injury when you haven’t trained for an event. Blowing a gig when you didn’t practice. Canceling an event when folks don’t register. And sometimes even when we prepare, things turnout differently than we imagine – ask any programmer, engineer, chef, etc.
Failure is a part of life. Failure is what happens when we try. Success is what happens when we keep trying and utilize different methods, ask for help, get a new perspective, and use better fertilizer. An epic failure is a steppingstone, makes for a good story, and gives you a lesson to learn and share. Epic fails are also great opportunities for connection because everyone has one and when enough time has passed, they good for a few laughs too.
