In an earlier blog I had talked about the parallels between gardening and other aspects of life. As I go through the harvesting phase of my gardening experience this summer I want to continue the analogy.
I have a 6 year old daughter that I home school. As part of our science program I decided to plant a garden this year. It was not a large one and I only planted a few plants of each variety. Gardening has not been my forte and in fact house plants don't survive very well in my care, but I did it anyway.
My garden has been a real learning experience. I had to figure out when to plant each plant because those planting times were not all the same. I have worked to water and weed my garden throughout the garden season. I have had triumphs and I have made mistakes that cost me plants.
I started my garden in pots for some strawberries, tomatoes and cucumbers. The strawberries got flooded out. I planted some strawberry starts and had better results but I had some trouble with animals getting my berries. My daughter has enjoyed a few handfuls of berries though and I call that a success for me. My cucumbers have given me a couple of successes so far. I planted 3 plants from seeds. I thought that I had planted one kind of cucumber but had planted another and had to throw out about 10 cucumbers that were overripe. Now I know what I planted and will harvest at the appropriate time since I still have cucumbers growing. My tomatoes have been a mixed result. I did plant all of them in pots. I transplanted two of my plants and kept the rest in the large pot I planted them in. The ones I transplanted have lots of flowers and I anticipate a decent harvest. The ones in the pot are still green but have no flowers at all.
I also planted carrots, beets, Kohlrabi, Green and wax beans, corn, cantaloupe and watermelon. My peas had a small harvest but half of the plants died. My carrots had a mixed result as I did harvest some too soon and others too late. The beets were too small and no one ate them. My wax beans didn't grow and I got a few meals out of my green beans with some still growing. My corn is growing but not without difficulty. In fact I planted additional seeds in order to have more chances of success. My cantaloupe is beginning to grow and ripen. I can't wait to have a home grown melon and my watermelon is beginning to flower.
My big surprise this season is a blackberry bush that was planted before we moved in and hadn't been producing. We are picking blackberries from our backyard this year.
So the results of my hard work have been mixed with success, mistakes, overcoming those mistakes and some failure. Life and business is like this as well.
In business we promote our business and products. Some potential customers or business partners become lucrative to your business. Some never pan out. Some give you some small success while others take extra work to get them. There are some that even come out of nowhere and you wonder how that happened.
In life we see the same as we work on relationships, goals, projects and dreams. Don't get discouraged as things don't happen the way we want. Each experience teaches us something valuable. The next time we will be able to do even better.
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