June 26, 2025

Abundance

“To sow seeds is to take the long view, to have vision, to have faith, except I don’t, as we’ve established. Not really. Not enough that I can simply trust, instead hedging my bets, an entire handful of snapdragon seeds flung into the soil, because what if I was measured about it and then nothing happened?”

My anxiety was really bad this winter, February and March spent in a state of generalized terror, for reasons that were all in my head, and also not entirely. It was awful. And near the end of March, I wrote about the seeds I’d planted, using the examples of the hard winters I’ve been through before to suggest that these don’t last forever. That we can plant seeds that bloom, even when the planting seems futile, the blooming impossible. To plant seeds at all is to believe in the future, even if that believing is difficult. It’s a kind of faith, and I was wrestling with all that as I wrote about the seeds that had planted, the seeds that had sprouted.

And then for maybe a week or so, nothing happened at all, and I wondered if I’d jinxed myself by writing that post. (I’ve learned that I really can’t write about my anxiety. To write about my anxiety is to try to harness it, control it, and whenever I do, even with the best intentions, I get even more anxious. I’m learning that I just have to let my anxiety be…) But eventually, more seeds sprouted, and then more and more, those snapdragon specks I’d stuck in the soil growing into seedlings (and also chamomile, and also nasturtiums, one with its first flower that I picked and ate this morning, the circle of life).

I love snapdragons so very much. They’re so eye-catching, colourful, and they grow and grow—I was still making bouquets out of them last November! And this year, for the first time ever, there were snapdragon seedlings for sale at our local convenience store/garden centre, so I bought a bunch of these, partly because I’m greedy, but also because I still wasn’t sure that my seedlings would grow—or that they were even snapdragons at all because I’m a very disorganized gardener who plants my seeds and then loses track of everything.

But as the seedlings grew (and were transplanted outside into pots), I finally learned what they looked like, which meant that when even more started popping up everywhere, I recognized them immediately. Turns out that, in addition to the snapdragons I’d planted in March and bought at the store in May, the plants from last year had self-seeded all over the place, so that so many of the pots in my garden have snapdragons growing up around the edges, and as the flowers begin to arrive, I am just so in love with this entire arrangement (and also with how much better I feel than I felt a few months ago).

I am glad I had faith and planted seeds with abandon, but it’s also amazing to consider that, had I done nothing at all, the flowers still would have bloomed.