Gardening is good for the soul. I've always loved flowers, but I didn't experience the joy of a garden as an adolescent. While my dad grew up on a farm, my mom didn't spend any time outdoors. As an artist, she spent many hours in her studio, painting and teaching. She made sure that my sister and I had much exposure to the arts through music, dance, and drawing. I took my first dance class at 12, and was hooked. I spent every waking minute dancing, in the studio, at home, down the street. Whenever I heard music, I couldn't help but move. I started dancing professionally at 16, and my life played out inside a sweaty dance studio, or on the road on tour. By 19, I had essentially burnt out, and had no idea how to find a path forward. On long walks, I was soothed by nature, irrevocably drawn to flowers. I did move on, jumping into an undergraduate program at the University of Michigan. Within two years I also got married, probably too quickly, started teaching dance, opened a studio, began performing locally...essentially jumping into life feet first in the same way I always have when passionate about something.
A few years later, I had a baby girl. 18 months after that, I had triplet boys (accident!!!). Don't get me wrong, I love my children deeply, but to say that our household often felt like sheer bedlam might be only a slight exaggeration. Needing some quiet, I headed out into the yard. I planted, anything and everything. I probably planted way too much, way too close together. Over the years, when my job seemed stressful, I went outside. When I experienced loss, I was soothed by my garden. When I needed to solve a problem, I pulled weeds (and usually solved the problem). Gardening for me was a summer thing, though, and once fall brought the new school year with my children and the new artistic season with my job, I always dropped the yard like a hot potato, inevitably creating a mountain of work the following spring that I was only too happy to jump back into, starting the cycle all over again.
In 2020, I was buried in work, trying to figure out how to keep an arts organization alive through COVID. I lost my dad early in the pandemic. My husband was in a terrible accident late in the pandemic, and by late 2021, everything around me seemed so dark. One night, too numb to do much of anything, I watched the first episode of Growing Floret. I cried. Crying wasn't anything new; I spent a good chunk of the last two years crying. These tears were different; tears of joy watching the beauty that Erin Benzakein created in building her flower farm and in watching her generosity in sharing this beauty with others. I never, ever thought about trying to plant on a larger scale even though the joy of watching a tiny seedling grow into a remarkable bloom rivals the feeling I get watching one of my students soar. As a teacher, I experience the privilege of taking a young child, a step at a time, through the path of training that enables this young person to share the power of dance and expression with others. A flower does that as well. Just as I can create a beautiful work of art using many dancers, different kinds of dancers, a floral designer, a good one, can do the same with many different types of blooms. Erin planted a seed on a special night for me, a seed that grew unintended. I jumped into her online course (even thought my husband thought I was crazy), and the work drew me out of the black hole. I'm not planting on about a quarter of an acre, and the true beauty is that I love my job as an artist even more, because planting and growing is good for the soul. One needs to be fed to feed others. Nature provides that sustenance, but good teachers can light the way for others.
June 22, 2022