I have said in the past that I don’t believe in "New Year’s resolutions." They are forced and timed in a way that sets most of us up for failure. But in the garden, there is a different, though similar, task that happens every year:
Taking stock.
You see, a garden doesn’t lie to you. It can’t. It doesn’t care about your feelings; it doesn’t care whether you think something worked or not. When a plant dies, the garden is telling you something didn’t work. When a plant thrives, the garden is telling you something went really well here.
There is no judgment about whether the failure was your fault, the weather’s fault, a random deer that ate the plant, or a fox that dug it up to make its new home. The fact remains that what you did either worked or didn’t. You can later assign a "liked it" or "didn’t like it." You can decide how you feel about the result of the year, but a garden will do you the great favor of letting you know how the year went.
So, sometime in the fall, I walk through the garden and make a list. What died? What is struggling? What thrived?
Why do we do this as gardeners? Because we need to know how to care for the garden and help it grow best. Should we spend all of our time leaning into the one thing that fails year after year? I won’t say no, but I will say we should be careful about it.
This is just like life. We should stop at certain points throughout our experience and ask ourselves: What works? What can we take stock of and be honest about? What took far more effort than we wanted, and what did we enjoy watching grow throughout the year and improve?
Take stock of your garden, and take stock of your life. Do it honestly, and the year that comes after will be even better than the one before.
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