Garden Stories
By Molly Flinkman
@molly_flinkman
Half of my peony plants refused to bloom this year.
The two that did were as beautiful as they always are. Their blooms were the color of bubblegum, full, and feathery. It’s just before they burst into flowers that I love them most though. The round bud is full of anticipation—a harbinger of spring and a reminder that winter never lasts forever.
The other two peony bushes didn’t even manage to produce a single bud, though they grew at the same rate as the ones that bloomed. Their leaves looked healthy as far as I could tell even though one of the plants grew curiously in the middle of the yard—untethered to any garden bed for reasons only the person who planted it knows.
A quick Google search told me there are many reasons a peony plant might fail to bloom: Too much shade. Planted too deeply. Late freeze. Dry conditions. Fungal disease.
It could be any of these factors. Because I’m not sure of exactly which one, I make various plans and do what I can. I’ll transplant them in the fall and research the right depth for the roots. I’ll water them next spring and pray that May doesn’t again send an unseasonable frost. Ultimately, I’ll hope that all this slow work will yield a better outcome.
***
One night, a few months ago, my daughter suddenly couldn’t fall asleep.
Besides a year-long bout of sleep rebellion that started when she was two, she has always been a pretty good sleeper, so, at 9 years old, this insomnia caught us off guard.
We’d tuck her in and then night after night after night after night after night (you get the idea), blonde curls and green-striped pajamas would round the corner into the family room long after bedtime. She couldn’t seem to do anything but toss and turn and cry and whine. I asked her why (maybe she could put words to it?), but she couldn’t (wouldn’t?) articulate a cause. We moved her lofted mattress to the floor. I bought her a book light. We gave her melatonin. I handed her a notebook to see if she could draw how she felt. Nothing seemed to work. The problem persisted. My husband, Jake, works many long shifts at the hospital, so I am often on my own for bedtime, and, during this season, I was especially spent of spare patience and flat-out tired.
Though I lost my patience more than I’d like to admit and asked forgiveness an equal measure of times, I kept at it. I tried to control what I could. I tried to view each night as an opportunity for grace.
We’re not out of it yet, but it is unmistakably better. We’ve made progress. Though it's hard to see some nights, it’s there, even if just a little at a time.
***
The evening is sticky. I push a stray hair out of my face and click the sprayer on my hose to the gentlest setting. I make sure to stand back away from the flower bed, but still, the water seems to pummel the impatiens I have planted in two rows around a pair of bright pink hydrangea plants.
I feel badly for these tiny white flowers. Each day when I spray them, they flatten out a bit, and I’m always worried they might not recover.
They always do though. They straighten. They grow.
I know there is science to help explain this reality, but it still feels mysterious to me how something so tiny and fragile can weather a storm and still come out taller and more grounded on the other side.
***
My daughter cries and cries. She doesn’t want to go.
“I want to stay here!” she wails from a blanket cocoon in her bed.
“You have to learn to do hard things,” I tell her. “This is a chance for you to practice.”
She is me—tightly wound up in anxiety and anticipation. I know from experience that the best way out is usually through though that philosophy comes from the hindsight she hasn’t yet gained. Will she trust me someday? Will she always need to be unraveled from her cocoon?
She is still crying when she leaves the house. I wonder if—I hope—next time will be easier.
***
I pass out garden gloves to my four kids, and we head outside to the bed of hostas underneath the giant maple tree in our front yard. My youngest son pulls a red wagon. His orange tiger boots stop at the edge of dirt, and he tells me he is a “worker man.” I instruct the kids to pull anything that isn’t a hosta and toss it into the five-gallon bucket.
Some weeds are easy to pull. The kids like those because the gratification is instant. “Look at all the roots!” they say. Those weeds are gone quickly though and then we’re left with dozens of single stems, growing low to the ground. They’re hard to grab and harder to pull out with roots attached. Two of the kids eventually get bored and head off to find something more interesting to do. Two remain: my middle daughter and the worker man, who is legitimately helping tow loads of weeds to the backyard with his wagon.
“This is hard,” my daughter says. “There are so many. What would happen if we just didn’t pull them?”
“They’d get too big and make it hard for the good things to grow,” I tell her.
***
My oldest daughter has started to call me on my shortcomings.
“You don’t have to raise your voice,” she’ll say. Or: “You’re not even paying attention; you’re just looking at your phone.”
It’s never hard to justify my own irritation or escapism where my kids are concerned because I’m tired or overwhelmed or behind or inconvenienced or overstimulated or all of the above at any point in the day. And now I have a keen set of eyes ready to point it all out.
Be kind, I say to the kids constantly.
Think of others before yourselves.
Be slow to anger.
But how will they learn these things if they don’t see them modeled in me first? How can I blame them for reacting the exact same way I do?
The work starts in me. It always does.
***
I rip into a bag of black mulch after I put all my kids to sleep. It wasn’t easy—the putting kids to sleep part—and even now, a small face peeks out the front door, interrupting the single task I want to accomplish tonight.
I sigh, take off my gloves, and head back inside. I do this back-and-forth a few more times until finally all my mulch is spread around the small garden bed in our front yard, and I’m left alone with the sound of water from the nozzle on my hose and my own thoughts about the rest of my plants.
The tomato plants are coming up nicely as are the cucumbers and jalapeños. The mint has overtaken its small box on our deck and the hanging plant Jake bought me for Mother’s Day has seen better days. I neglected to water the two hydrangeas in the back garden bed consistently last summer—and they punished me for it—so I’m trying to do better by them this year. Each day, I take what I know and what I’ve learned and what I’ve observed, and I put it all together in various combinations. I make my way around my yard and consider all these plants with all these various needs, and I wonder: Will they thrive where they are? Will they mature with what they’ve been given?
I’ve done the best I can so far, so all that’s left to do is continue.
Tend. Nurture. Trust that hard work and faith will eventually yield growth.
Molly Flinkman is a freelance writer from central Iowa where she lives with her husband, Jake, and their four kids. A lover of houseplants, neutral colors, and good books, she loves to write about how her faith intersects the very ordinary aspects of her life and hopes her words will encourage and support other women along the way. You can connect with Molly on Instagram or through her monthly newsletter, Twenty Somethings.
Photo by Jennifer Floyd.