“You can eat a tomato in January,” she said, “but why would you want to?”

This article from yesterday's New York Times makes me simultaneously proud, excited, inspired, and terrifically anxious.



My thought process, upon reading it, goes something like this: "Yay! Farmer-florists. Yes. Wonderful."


And then quickly becomes: "WAIT. What if all sorts of people with money and time decide to do what I'm trying to do? What if I can't get moving fast enough and Flower Scout dissolves in a sea of sameness? What if the movement moves faster than me?"

Then I start thinking: "I didn't intend to be trendy. Do people think this is trendy?! I was inspired by the same strong, tenacious women that inspired this article, right? Is this scary? Why is this scary???"
 

And I flip back and forth, reading the article again and again, trying to figure out what's so damn scary about it. 

"But still and the same," I say to myself, remembering to breathe, "what's the matter with more people getting excited about local, organic flowers?" I think about summer, about walks in the woods, about my GARDEN. Wow, my garden. "There's nothing bad there."


In fact, it might be my favorite thing. So okay, alright, New York Times. Give all the props you want.

Let's all go get some shelf mushrooms and ornamental kale and vining things and love one another. If I spend the rest of my life putting stems in a vase for myself and no one else at all, I'll spend it perfectly.