Lessons from the Garden: Patience

In the dead of winter, the idea of planning a new little cut flower garden was a bright spot. A meager 4ft x 8ft garden bed was full of possibilities. Can we actually make dahlias grow and flourish? They have a reputation for being finicky. Should we start our zinnias from seeds inside? Where should I get unique varieties of the cosmos I want to grow? The possibilities are endless.

In mid-March we started our seeds in a corner of the basement, complete with a seedling tray, grow light and heat mat. It all went well, and seedling deaths were kept to a minimum. 

The preparation that goes along with gardening is absolutely rife with spiritual analogies and there are so many I’d like to share with you. But for now, the one that has been popping up over and over is simple: patience. I don’t think you can be impatient while gardening.

Four Reasons Why: 

1. You can’t start your seedlings too soon. Yes, the point of starting them early is to get them growing sooner and thus you will have bigger plants that yield blooms earlier But if you sprout them too early, you can run into problems. They can, in fact, get too big for the little cell trays and then you have to spend time replanting the seedlings into bigger containers so their roots can spread and continue to grow properly. 
   
2. You can’t transition your plants outside too quickly, it’s imperative that you harden them off first. Since they have been grown in the safety of a warm, climate controlled, indoor location, they have to slowly acclimate to the outdoors. This means an hour or two the first day, two or three the second day, until they are spending longer stints of time outside.  If you are impatient and you leave your plants outdoors for too long (as I did), they will get sunburnt. This is how I ultimately killed all of my green bean plants. I left them outside for six hours on a sunny and unseasonably warm day. They grow like weeds, but they are delicate when it comes to the sun. 
   
3. You can’t plant them in the ground too quickly. Once you’ve hardened your seedlings, you have to wait until all danger of frost has passed for most varieties of cut flowers that will be planted in a cutting garden in the midwest. Zinnias, in particular, don’t even like cooler weather. My dahlia tubers required a ground temperature of 60º F which meant waiting until the very end of May. And if you cannot wait, you will kill your plants. 
   
4. You can’t forget to pinch them back. Once you’ve finally got your plants into the ground (at long last!) and the buds are beginning to appear and you can see all your hard work beginning to pay off, you realize you have to pinch the plants. What is pinching, you ask? This means when your seedlings hit a certain height, for cosmos it’s 8-10 inches, you cut off the top sets of leaves. This tells the plant to send the energy to the bottom part of the plant where it will produce more and longer stems. In my case, the pinched portions included an abundance of buds. Buds that contained beautiful petals and bright colors just waiting to burst forth. I actually had a hard time pinching off all those buds. The bottom line, though? When you pinch the plants, it delays the flowering. However, with time it yields more blooms and longer stems that are ideal for cut flowers.  It’s already been a couple of weeks since I did the pinching and they’ve grown so much and they’re already starting to flower again.
   

Patience. A hard virtue to learn but one that usually yields great fruit.

At my stage of life, it seems as though the name of the game is often one of waiting. I do have aspirations for life, but life with small children is so very demanding in its own rite. I feel my husband and I are oftentimes saying we don’t have the capacity for this project or that right now, this endeavor or that. It’s not that we are using children as an excuse. If we try to rush or push something through before it’s time, it may very well be unsuccessful or less fruitful that it could have been had we simply waited. 

In hearing from mothers who are past the time of having small children, they often say that time of life was a season of hiddenness and of growth. The more outward ministries or endeavors tend to take shape after their children grow to be a bit older. 

How about you?

How does this apply to your life? What is it you’re waiting on?  

• Is there something that’s budding or growing, but doesn’t seem to be taking shape quickly enough for your liking? 
• Is there something that’s been resting on your heart for a while, but you still can’t seem to find the right conditions for true growth?
• Is there something you tried to get going but it seemed to wither away?
• Or perhaps you have already waited with great patience and now are experiencing great growth and fruitfulness?

What is it for you?

The possibilities are countless, but I suspect there’s a specific area of your life that jumps to your mind.  I’m not here to tell you what lesson you need to take away, but I know that the more I reflect on this idea of nourishing the soil, preparing and hardening the seedlings, and even pinching back when growth seems to be shaping up, is a good but hard one to apply to my own life. 

When you get down to the bottom line with patience, yes, it can be a hard one to learn. Especially since humans like instant gratification and immediate results, or at least outcomes on our own timelines. But this is rarely how good things come about. I had a friend in college who always used to say “God’s timing is perfect.” How true this is… but how difficult it can be! It presupposes a deep trust that God desires our good and a deep surrender to how and when he wishes to accomplish those goods.

For prayer and reflection

• Take some time to reflect on the questions above or whatever has come up in your heart as you read this.
• Pray with James 5:7-8 taking note of what it stirs up or brings to mind. Bring these things before God in prayer. Let him speak to you.

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