30 Posts In 30 Days - Day 20: Garden

This is Day 20 of the 30 Posts In 30 Days Challenge I set for myself to start writing online. This post was originally published on X.

About two years ago, I reached a goal I thought I wouldn’t that early in my life.

After a series of lucky events, I got the chance to buy my own house. And with it came a big, beautiful garden.

Here are a few lessons I’ve learned in the short time I’ve been able to grow my own fruits and vegetables:

Things take time. Nothing happens overnight.

If you want apples, you can’t plant a seed today and expect a full-grown tree tomorrow.

Sometimes all we can do is simply trust that our small, everyday actions will lead to a big reward.

We tend to look at life in a binary way.

Everything seems to be either black or white, good or bad, a success or a failure.

But I’ve learned that it is much more complicated than that.

Life happens in seasons.

A rainy day can be a curse or a blessing for your garden, depending on the time of the year.

There’s nothing better than biting into a carrot you grew and plucked out of the soil yourself.

There’s nothing sweeter than the taste of an apple, picked from the tree you watered for years.

Except pizza. Pizza beats everything.

Especially if you made the sauce with fresh San Marzano tomatoes from your own garden.

More than anything, tending to a garden is an exercise in patience and care.

I think there’s a lot to be learned from it for every other aspect of our lives.