Hello beautiful people,

 

I planted zinnias this summer.

I know I planted zinnias because I love zinnias. I bought the seeds, opened the packets, planted them in several beds around the garden and waited.

And sure enough, up came zinnias.

 

Except in one bed.

There, I got snapdragons.

 

At first, I kept looking at them thinking, What are you?

Because when you're expecting one thing, it can take a minute to actually see what's standing right in front of you.

 

Merlin, reasonably, asked the obvious question.

“Are you sure you didn't just buy the wrong seeds?”

Fair.

I am very willing to accept user error. There are plenty of times when user error is exactly what happened.

 

But not this time.

 

The packet said zinnias. The other beds had zinnias. And somehow, in this one spot, I was growing snapdragons.

Not even really snapdragon season, by the way.

Of course, this made me laugh.

 

The snapdragons were beautiful.

They just weren't what I'd planted.

So I left them. And then I started adding a few things around them. If we were apparently doing snapdragons over here, I figured we might as well have some fun with it.

 

And now I love that bed.

 

I've been thinking about how often some version of this happens outside the garden.

 

We decide what we're planting. We make the plan. We picture what it's going to look like. We do the work. We water it. We wait.

 

And then something else starts growing.

Our first instinct can be to wonder what went wrong.

 

Sometimes there is user error. Again, happy to own mine.

But sometimes there isn't.

Sometimes you really did plant the zinnias.

And still, here come the snapdragons.

 

Maybe the invitation isn't always to figure out why. Maybe it's to get curious about what's actually growing. To leave it there for a minute. To play with it. To see what it might become before deciding it doesn't belong simply because it wasn't what you pictured.

 

And here's the other thing.

I still got my zinnias.

They're blooming in the other beds, exactly where I planted them.

So this wasn't a story about not getting what I wanted.

Because I got what I wanted, too.

 

Zinnias and snapdragons.

Maybe that's one of the simplest ways to think about abundance.

Not necessarily having more, but having enough room in our lives for and.

 

We can be grateful for what is working and curious about what is changing. We can know where we're going and still make room for a surprise. We can create intentionally and leave a little space for universal magic.

 

And I love that the universe has a sense of humor.

 

Or maybe this is one of those tiny bits of universal magic happening around us all the time, and we're usually too busy looking for what we planted to notice what else is growing.

 

I don't know.

 

What I do know is that I could have pulled those snapdragons because they weren't supposed to be there.

Instead, I left them.

Then I added a few things around them and made the whole bed even more fun.

 

That part feels important, too.

We don't have to just accept what shows up. We get to participate in what happens next.

 

Maybe abundance isn't always about adding more.

Maybe it's about noticing that life is bigger than the picture we made for it.

 

So take a look around.

What's growing in your life right now that you didn't plant?

 

As for me, I'm going to keep watering both.

love,
mmc