the little rose that could….

Welcome to Tuesdays with Chel.

Each week Chel Micheline of gingerblue dot com will offer her perspectives on our Bliss Habits. Please enjoy the wisdom and clarity she offers.

“You’ve got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was.”
– Irish Saying

Everything in life- from the smallest cell to the little sprout to the largest building to the *entire* universe- has a beginning, has a middle, and has an end.

I want to tell you a little story.

When I began gardening about two years ago, I really had no idea what I was doing. My very first seed order was sort of a free-for-all- I just picked what I wanted to grow and what looked interesting or pretty and I didn’t pay any attention to things like zones, ideal growing conditions, etc. I just ordered what I liked.

My seeds arrived a few days later and I eagerly planted a little bit from each packet, not bothering to read the *backs* of the packets to see what I should be doing or what I should expect from the seeds. Luckily, many of the seeds took, and my gardening adventure was well on its way.

Of course, there were some seeds that didn’t grow. When they didn’t do anything, I just I re-used the pots and the soil and planted new seeds.

One of the packet of seeds that I ordered was for a miniature rose plant. *If* I had read the packet, I would have found out that the rose seed required not only cool temperatures (which we rarely have here in Southwest Florida) but also took about SIX WEEKS to pop through the soil.

That whole process, of a seed becoming a tiny plant and makings its way up through the soil, is called “germination”. Most plants take a few days to germinate. Some will take a week or so. But rose seeds require weeks to germinate.

Clearly, I didn’t know this.

Anyway, I went on to use that pot and that same soil for a bunch of others seeds and plants. Some things grew, some didn’t, but I totally forgot about the rose seed.

Eight months later, that same pot and that same soil was sitting unused in the corner, when something began to grow in it.

I assumed it was a posy- I had thrown some seeds in the pot earlier in the month but they hadn’t taken. I was happily surprised and excited to have some posies in my garden.

So I tended to the tiny sprout, gave it lots of water and fertilizer and sunshine.

It was sort of decrepit, to be honest. It was a wimpy little floppy sprout with a few brownish looking leaves on it. However, it was alive, and that’s pretty much all that’s required of any plant to maintain its place in my garden.

A few months later, the little dippy seedling began to grow. And grow like crazy. It grew *way* past the height of even the heartiest of posies.

A few months later, it flowered. It was a strange looking flower, but the blooms smelled SO amazing. Just like roses… even Tom commented on it.

And then I realized- it was the ROSE. That rose seed that I planted over a year earlier, the seed which NEVER took (or so I thought), which had many other plants and seeds inserted and grown ON TOP OF IT, had actually finally sprouted and grew.

I was shocked. This little seed took its very sweet time, more than a year, but eventually poked its way out of the soil and wound up growing into a rather large and bushy plant that I eventually had to move outside because it was TOO hearty for my little container garden! Now it lives on the back porch, where butterflies and hummingbirds can feed from it. And it continues to grow and bloom.

What’s the point of this story?

Every single thing in life has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Everything INCLUDING our dreams, our hopes, our desires, our *lives*, our passions have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Some things just happen fast. Some things happen according to some time table. But other things, like the big beautiful rose plant, happened on its own time. That rose seed was in the soil, doing its thing. It took much longer than expected, but it turned out to be a wonderous thing, a huge surprise.

How many things in our lives have we given up on that may *still* be in the early stages of germination?

How many dreams and ideas have we given up for dead because they didn’t happen according to some timetable we assigned to them? For me, I thought that the “beginning” of the rose was the day I first saw it in the seed catalogue and ordered the packet. And I thought the “end” of that rose was the day that I planted something else on top of it. The truth is that the rose hadn’t even really *started* when I declared it was done.

My message to you is this: don’t give up. I am slowly understanding this, myself.

All growth takes time. Even if you feel that something has passed you by, something didn’t come to fruition, that your *life* is not as it should be, remember this: there’s a GOOD chance that the thing you hoped for may still be in the “early” stages, working below the soil, that its period of germination is longer than you expected or hoped.

That the dream that you once had, or the love that you really want, or the life you wish to live… maybe these things just need more time, more attention, a slight shift in conditions, maybe even tiny bit of love, before they can take hold and push itself up through the soil of our expectations.

Honor this process, honor all stages of growth. It’s hard to patient (NO ONE knows this better than I do!) but let yourself be open to the possibility.