Pinching Dahlias
The inspiration for everything on the farm thus far, came from a place of desperation. Being deeply motivated to find your way out of the darkest place you could imagine isn’t a task for the faint of heart. It’s just like sowing seeds; it takes a lot of coaxing, cajoling, dreaming. It takes a lot of patience, but mostly it’s hope. Ok, there’s a lot of acceptance too.
People grow in parallels to plants. Though the span of our life cycles may be vastly different, we can learn a lot about the specificity of the needs of a plant by its genetics. From where it came, how it evolved, the conditions it was exposed to and how they impacted a lineage over time to have certain adaptive traits. People are no different. The thing about plants, well a few things about plants… They’re so clear in their needs once you’ve taken the time to observe their habits and growth cycles. Some love water and heat, other's not so much. Some prefer shade and some want to bask in the sun, never missing one moment of daylight.
When you grow things, you grow along side them. You choose the techniques that resonate best with you. You innately learn a lot about yourself and how you handle stress and disappointment and failure. Nature is unforgiving and you have to work with these things, not against them. You’re sure to lose any battle initiated with these unpredictable natural forces. People, plants, pets there are so many lessons to learn or unlearn or relearn. If you’re willing to get a little dirty, there is so much wisdom outside yourself to be shared in times of need. And something or someone out there does rely on you to exist.
After dedicating many hours that turned into may days to preparing my dahlia beds, it came time to pinch the central stems. Supposedly this pinch releases the main stem bud which pushes the plant to refocus its energy on more prolific bloom production. Well, it felt like 2 steps forward and 5 steps back as my clippers touched the stem. It was a metaphor for the past 2 years of battle I had put into salvaging what I could of my business. A business I spent 10 years building from nothing. A business that I grew alongside my first child. A business that funded our lives and gave us everything we dreamt up. But as the foliage fell to the ground, acceptance swept over me. So far, it’s been very successful. and we have more buds popping up each week. But hindsight is 20/20. I’ll choose to listen to the lesson this time.
Yesterday, I closed the door of my Pilates Studio for the very last time. I wanted to cry once more. I think it almost became a habit from the many times I had gone there to re-evaluate what remained and find the answer to the question, “What next?” It was something I’d been asked for months, over a year in fact. I didn’t know what was next. But it’s time to pinch the dahlia and move forward to see beautiful things blooming from this less than ideal conundrum. “You worked really hard to build this. And you will always work really hard. And THAT’S great.” My daughter said to me as we were removing the last bits of memories from the space.