Planning - What Do You Want To Grow?

one of my raised bed gardens from 2021

Gardening brings me peace.  It makes me slow down, it makes me plan, it helps me dream - about what I could walk out to every day.  I get to literally create my reality with a $4 packet of seeds.  

It all starts with planning - what do I want to grow?  I have favorites from the year before, new varieties I want to try and old ones I want to skip.  I spend a LOT of time looking at seed catalogs!

It made me think about answering the question "what do I want to grow in my life?"  What do I want to spend my time nurturing and watering? Is there anything that I've been tending to that just isn't giving me beautiful flowers at the end of the day?  Are there chances I'm not taking because I think I "shouldn't"?  I certainly don't know the answers to everything but it's an excercise I'm finding useful.

For instance - last fall one of our team member's home was flooded to the point that it was uninhabitable.  Her life was literally covered in mud.  While I am confident that she would have much rather been with us in the office instead of having a house full of water, that's what she was working with and, as such, she didn't end up being able to come back to work for a month. 

To say I scrambled is an understatement.  We were short-staffed with her and now without her we were in the weeds.  We also received a tremendous press mention that month which quadrupled sales for our Firming Eye Gel - awesome across the board but it meant we needed to make four times the product with one less set of hands (we fill and label everything by hand) in addition to everything else we were trying to keep afloat.  There was no planning going on - there was only reacting and trying to keep our heads above water.  That behavior is not something I want to nurture and continue to grow.  I want to pull it out by the roots! 

I'd like to be as good at planning in stressful times as I am planning my seedlings!

I can't keep floods at bay but I can change the way I operate if/when they hit.  Next time the FIRST thing we're going to do is sit down and make a plan.  What is essential?  What can we drop?  How do we prioritize both the health of the company and ourselves? 

I find planning can sometimes feel like a waste of time - especially when you're busy.  But I'm learning that that time spent either proactively or in the moment can mean hours saved down the line.

So I've got my list of seeds and now I'm working on my list of ways I can support myself more.  Taking deep breaths through all of it 😊.