Tending your ideas and dreams

Looking down on my veggie garden, late August 2013

I've always thought of the harvest in terms of farming, but more recently in my life I've thought about it around my own vegetable garden, too.

September is traditionally harvest season in farm country, and our 'prompt' for this month is harvest. It made me start digging a little deeper and here are some 'definitions' I found:
to gather in (as in a crop)
The quantity of a natural product gathered in a single season.
gather ~ pick ~ reap

Looking at these I see that harvest is a great metaphor in life.

My style for following my ideas and dreams has probably tended to mimic my gardening style:

I plant seeds or starters – I always have grand plans. I'm pretty careful about putting this plan together initially, although I don't study up on exactly how I should be planting what seeds, or how to best tend. I just do it.

I get excited when things begin to grow, but after awhile I don't tend the garden as well as I could. I don't give it the attention I believe it needs and deserves. I let it grow a bit wild.

Is this a bad thing?

I still get plenty to harvest although every year I do lose some things. Each year something grows better than something else – even when that something did better the year before.

My beautiful radicchio is a perfect example. I just planted the seeds this spring because I wanted to try growing radicchio.

I don't think I planted with the proper spacing, and/or I didn't thin them properly – to give them the space they needed to grow nice sized heads. The other day I had to pull some out that had gotten slimy because they didn't have enough room to grow.

But I still have some beautiful plants, and I even harvested some to eat as I was thinning. And I think I will have some yummy heads shortly!

In thinking on all of this, I realized how my gardening style seems to mimic how I've often tended to my ideas and dreams:
I give them plenty of attention to begin with, and then I usually let them evolve with out much tending. I leave things to see what happens.

Tending is an important aspect for the cultivation your ideas and dreams, as well as your garden. It's also important to let things have time to grow on their on. I'm realizing that it is this dance between the two that brings abundance to the harvest. 

How do you tend your ideas and dreams? When do you let them grow on their own? Does this help with your harvest?

Lisa, aka the mountain mermaid, is a creative, independent spirit who loves to explore and play outdoors. She lives in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Embracing her creative life is an ongoing adventure, a journey that she loves and trusts more each year – and hopes to inspire others to do the same. She is also an entrepreneur providing innovative business support, including graphic design services, for passionate creative entrepreneurs.