Growing Imperfection

Rich and I spent the better part of today ripping out our failed container garden in the front of the house.

Before we started, we knew it was going to require trip(s) to garden centers around town.  Of course, our Princess of Color could not be left behind, so she came along with us, offering her opinions about flowers the flowers we should plant by her senses rather then our overall garden design.

Since we are still new to any kind of gardening, I cannot fault her aesthetic.

Lauren was so inspired by the first place we went, she just had to plant a flower planter of her own.

I thought long and hard about letting her do it.  If I said, "Yes." it meant that I would be the helper, not the leader of the project.  I would have to stifle all my perfectionist tendencies and let her place the flowers however she wanted to place them in planter.  This sounds really great on paper...let the kid put her flowers in the planter...they are just flowers.  But be honest with yourself.  We all have our own way of doing things.  We like things just so and letting other people "interfer" with our system is a hard thing to do.  We have to let go of our control and trust that their way and their system is just as okay as ours.  Even children deserve the  respect to safely explore their world in a way that is different than ours, but it is not easy to give up the control to which we so tightly cling in order to keep our world secure.  

I trusted my daughter.  I let her pick out  pink, purple, and white petunias as well as some yellow/orange geraniums to split between to big planters I already owned.  I bought more potting soil.  I stayed silent and showed her how to carefully transfer little plants to the big planter.  We had a blast together!  

Do the planters look the way I would have put them together?  No.  Does it matter?  Not a single bit.

I gave up the control, trusted my daughter, and realize we planted flowers, memories, laughter, and love.