Lessons From a Greenhouse

I’ll be going back to it tomorrow, working in the greenhouse.

Playing in the dirt and planting things, things my hands have always done as far back as I can remember. Stories told in the dirt-filled lines in my hands.

Two years and counting since I started getting paid for it, a job that makes me happy, and people I love to see, and things I love to do.

You’re bound by a different time when your work follows the green growing things. You follow a different pattern of life. You go slow, you look deeper, you pay attention longer. It’s become a song in my heart, a tuneless song on the wind in the grass and the smell of earth. You learn to hear things differently, you learn to see things differently, when your hands learn new shapes, and your heart takes on the gentleness of handling life, real life. You learn to touch your soul softer, you learn to watch for hurt instead of make it, you learn to lean in a little closer.

When you break a seedling by the stem, you break the life of it.

With the young at heart, hold them by the outer leaves, give them room to grow and strength to do. Cut a heart off from its life source and there is no hope of it ever recovering. Nurture the stem, the heart, when it is new and growing and thin with life, handle it with care. Plant it safe.

Damaged leaves will never repair themselves.

The damage done will not be healed. Dead leaves must be cut away. As in winter, old branches must be cut away. There is no new growth without removing. Remove what is old, what does not serve. Remove what is dead, what you carry around with you like baggage. Cut it away. You have carried it long enough, and what keeps you heavy holds you down, holds you back. Let it go. Make room to grow. Make room for beauty.

Remember your roots, little one.

The place where you stand, the solid ground no rain can wash away, only nurture. Plant yourself well in good, fertile soil. Amend it with beautiful words, things you love. Tend it with gentle hands.

Remember your heart to better love another’s. Tend the ground you walk upon, tend the soil in which you grow.

Live in the sun.

Rest in the dark.

Grow.

Bloom.

Make room.

Grow strong, little root.

Love, Kayla