Today, I am the gardening queen.

I will weed. I will fertilize. I will plant.

The back of the car is cleared out, more room for potting soil and plants that I will attempt to keep alive through the better part of this year.

I’ve already got lettuce and English peas sprouting. Who knows what else I will plant today? April 15th is supposedly the magic date around here for planting anything that will wither upon a light frost. But it’s fully springtime, with the pollen thick on the vehicles and the bluebirds fighting over the lone birdhouse on the fence.

I am the embodiment of “The Land” ride at Epcot Center, the “So God Made a Farmer” Super Bowl commercials, and the musical “Oklahoma!”

Oh, what a beautiful morning!

Evidently lots of other people were feeling the same way, our green thumbs itching to get to work. Home Depot might as well have been Disney World, for the checkout line at the garden center extended nearly to the double doors leading into the main part of the store. Most customers were not just pushing buggies, but they were pulling larger carts piled full of mulch, landscape rock, and fertilizer.

If they’re like me, we’ll all make a valiant effort the first month, while the rains are falling and the heat isn’t scorching. 

Things get harder in June. It’s usually by that time that I let my watering go enough days that my plants wilt, then turn dry and crispy. They might as well have been cooked in an air fryer.

But some anonymous plants from last year have survived, and I’m hopeful they’re going to deliver this year. Youngest Daughter planted the seeds last year, along with others she chose. I let her have free rein over the flower bed. I’m not even sure what all she planted, but last year, very little bloomed.

We had some giant zinnias that got blown over during the first hard summer thunderstorm. There’s another occupational hazard to growing a beautiful garden. If the weather’s not cooking the plants, it’s beating them up.

The little mystery plants sprouted like weeds. There were plenty of green things growing, but remember, by this time it was June or July and the thrill was gone. Summer got busy and the plants got left alone. I occasionally checked them during fall and winter. The dark green leaves were thicker than typical weeds, and they seemed to be pretty tough. They survived the cold, the damp, the hot, the dry. But what were they?

Home Depot had the answer. There were Shasta daisies in pots, no patience necessary to wait on them to grow, and very useful for checking out their leaves. They looked and felt the same as what is growing in clumps in the flower bed.

The information on the seed packets was even more helpful. Shasta daisies are perennials, but they may not bear flowers their first year. The packet today said that they don’t bloom until 300 days after sprouting. They can go through spells of not flowering at all. While they’re hardy little plants that can withstand extreme cold and scorching drought, they can be finicky with flowering.

Sometimes they need a little pruning and dividing to get them to blossom. In this case, however, it seems like all they need is time.

Bless them, they’re about like the rest of us.

And when the right time comes, we too will bloom.

It takes years for some of us to reveal those first fragile petals, the firstfruits of all that time spent working toward some goal, now realized.

The daisies might not bloom this year. One lady online said that hers didn’t bloom for three years after the initial planting.

That’s ok. They’re tough. They’ve been quietly growing all this time, and they’re not going anywhere anytime soon.

And by God’s grace, neither am I.