The Slow Work of Planting

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses, we must plant more trees.

Most of what we hope for arrives on a delay we cannot see. The tree goes in years before the first bloom, and nothing about the planting feels like roses. It feels like a shovel, a sore back, a small hole. Patience here is not waiting. It is doing the plain thing today, a glass of water, one honest sentence, ten slow breaths, and trusting the root to keep its own time.