I stepped outside yesterday, after yet another big storm here in New England, and noticed that all the bulbs I planted this fall are starting to push up through the ground. Little green tips everywhere. There are a few crocuses already in bloom.

As of Friday, spring will officially have arrived and it looks like my garden got the memo.

I'm an avid gardener, so I'm elbows-deep in plans right now – fruit trees, veggie garden, cutflowers, herbs, and continuing the shift to native plants and pollinator favorites. 

But this time of year also brings something else. A reminder to take stock and do an audit for both my plants and my life. 

What survived winter? What didn't make it? What am I not sure about yet?

It’s that in-between season. You can feel things shifting, but you can’t quite see what will come up yet. 

When I look at what's in my garden right now, it falls into four categories:

• Planted with intention. These are the things I really hope come up and I’m looking forward to them.
• Inherited from past owners. These are plants that were grandfathered into my gardens.
• Struggling to survive. These are the ones that didn’t look so great at the end of last summer and I'm not sure they'll make it. 
• I don’t like this.  These need to be pulled or given away. 

This last one is the hardest for me. I really struggle to pull anything that grows. I feel like if it made it this far it should have a shot, but what I didn’t realize for a long time is that it was actually limiting my ability to have a garden that I loved. 

A perfect example of this is eggplant. For years, I planted them. I think someone told me to and said I’d love it. So every year I planted seeds and every year it produced. 

And every year the eggplants sat on my counter until I gave them away or they went soft, because no one in my house eats eggplant. Not me. Not my family. Not once.

And yet I kept planting it. Telling myself this was the year I'd figure out what to do with it. This was the year I'd become someone who ate eggplant.

Finally, at the end of one summer,  I looked at it and just... stopped. I yanked out the plants, tossed the seeds, and cleared that space to plant more of what I actually love. And it made room for me to experiment with some things I was genuinely curious about.

How often do we do this in life? 

How many eggplants are we investing time and energy into before we stop and realize  –  I don't even like eggplant?

The gardens of our lives are often created in the same way. 

They’re made up of beliefs we inherited.
Roles we stepped into.
Things we said yes to.
Situations we're navigating.
Dreams we're tending.
Intentions we set and then forgot about.


And over the years we collect more and more. And not everything belongs there.

Plants do better when they have space grow and so do humans. If our proverbial bed is crowded with things we were never that committed to in the first place, it holds everything back –  including the things we actually want to grow.

The Spring energy of the equinox is a really powerful time . But it's only as powerful as what you plant and commit to tending to.

Are you growing what you want? Now is the perfect time to check in.

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