When I picked up seedlings at a local farm, I felt overwhelmed by a strange sense of … Peace?

This was in May. We were not allowed to get out of our cars. So all I saw was a wide open space, a greenhouse, two farmers, bumper stickers, and a big flag on a big truck awaiting compost soil.

Stickers of many perspectives revealed ideals coming together on a calm spring morning. While this is not always possible, it is possible in nature to manifest the surreal.

Amazed, I revisited an ideal I was rooted in by my parents: “We are flowers of one garden.”

In this series, I will share with you what that might mean through practical and poetic gardening advice. Grounding in the garden is hard work. While the soil is hard, it is also tender.

We are flowers in one potted garden with poor yet rich soil. It’s not enough. When a flower doesn’t bloom you change the environment. We are being transplanted collectively. It’s beautiful. It’s hard. It’s just. It’s love.

The love is so wide. How flowers can transplant themselves exists beyond a bed.

… Speak to a flower sweetly and it will grow. Speak to a flower callously and it will still grow, just in different ways …

Mother Earth is humming. Give her your heart.

Could we really be flowers of one garden? Are we flowers of an infinite number of gardens? Or something else entirely?