
Strawberry flower in my garden!
Today was a good day for planting.
(Ahem! True-life metaphor alert!)
It’s cool and overcast, but not raining. ANd it rained recently so the dirt is nice and soft, which makes weeding super-easy and digging holes a cinch.
I have a bunch of seedlings purchased from the Cal Poly Farm Store, sitting in their tiny plastic pots, waiting to be transplanted into the garden (or in some cases, simply into bigger pots).
I bought them a week ago, and their roots are probably getting more crowded by the hour. Several of them, like the strawberry pictured here, are already flowering!
So it’s time to plant.
Which means clearing some weeds.
Which means finding my gardening gloves.
And the trowel.
And digging some good compost from the bottom of the pile, which means finding a shovel and a wheelbarrow and, wait, side-project alert, let’s just skip the compost for today.
(Breaking projects down into tasks is something I’m slowly, slowly getting better at, as is not letting the projects spawn side-projects — but this is an ongoing process, and the side-projects need a safe holding pen in the meantime…)
So here’s what’s waiting to be transplanted:

I've discovered the oregano labeled "Greek" is more flavorful than that labeled "Italian."
- Eight tomato plants (mostly weird heirloom varieties)
- Three pepper plants (two poblano and one bell)
- Six sugar snap pea vines
- Three yellow crookneck squash plants
- Eight Eversweet strawberry plants
- Four herbs (no, not parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme — we’ve already got rosemary and sage growing like crazy. The new ones are curly parsley, Greek oregano, cilantro and thyme)
And that’s simply too much to plant today. Too daunting. Would take too long. Impossible.
(Just like my normal everyday freakout over my to-do list, which is always too long for any mere mortal to accomplish…)
So it was extremely tempting to just not start.
It’s a familiar pattern: Simply engage in extreme short-term thinking and avoid the project (*cough* blog post *cough*) for one more day. Also I was secretly hoping it would start to rain so I would get all the virtue of “planning to plant” but not actually have to do the muddy work of it.
But the skies didn’t cooperate — it continued to be absolutely perfect planting weather.
So out I went.
Normally I detest weeding. But with the ground so soft and moist, I was able to get whole clumps of big bad weeds, roots and all — which was deeply satisfying. The sense of triumph each time I ripped up a long snaky root is something I completely didn’t expect.
(Just like when I get some amazingly cool caller during my Thursday Open Office Hour, or one of my WordPress Swimming Lessons graduates tells me about how much fun they’re having with their site, or someone retweets me on Twitter…)
So, in what seemed like an astonishingly short time (always a clue that there has been some serious State of Flow going on), I had cleared enough room for the squash plants and the pea vines. Amazing!
Two of the strawberries went into a wide, shallow pot. With a mental note that I might want some more pots like this.
And the oregano and thyme went into box planters that didn’t need much preparation.

Newly transplanted squash seedlings, with their bed of pine-needle mulch and their drip irrigation line
So I’ve still got the tomatoes and the peppers (not even counting the Fresno peppers that I haven’t even bought yet) and the cilantro and the parsley to transplant, and the basil seeds and green bean seeds to start, and what else haven’t I thought of?
(Just like when I endlessly remind myself that there’s still more to do…always more to do…the to-do list stretches to infinity…)
And also, I have peas and squash and strawberries now stretching their roots into good soil.
And also, I have the recent memory of the intense satisfaction of getting rid of weeds.
And also, the work that I did long ago to run drip irrigation lines to all the garden areas is still paying off, right now, every time the new plants get watered. (Thanks, past me, for knowing it would be worth it!)
And the compost, whenever I get around to digging it up, is going to be super-good for all my little plantlings.
(Just like all the interactions and conversations and ruminations that have happened for me in the past few years of entrepreneuring — they are feeding everything that’s happening now, and all the things I’m choosing to do next…)
What are you planting?
(Metaphorically or, you know, with actual leaves and roots and stuff — both kinds count!)





