I Should Have Planted Them Last Year… — Part 2

Whatever you do, make sure you enjoy it! Life lessons learned from living on a farm

This particular story happened about two years ago, and originally I posted it on my personal blog. However, this is one of my deja vu stories which happens almost every year and therefore is always up to date. All the life lessons my farm life teaches me are worth sharing, so I decided to split the article into two parts and publish them here too. This is Part 2. Part 1 you can read here

We finished planting the bush near my garden shed, and it was time to move to my ‘garden on the rock’ and plant a couple more bushes. Nonetheless, when I arrived at the garden, I noticed a few of my shrubs didn’t look the best. They grew too fast, and as a result, their branches were thin and long, unable to hold the thousands of blossoms they were carrying and therefore, they were breaking and lying on the ground. Oh well, so pruning became my next job. As you can see, I gave my plants a pretty good haircut.

Oh, I just remember something completely different (yes, that’s true, I easily get distracted at work)…

Do you like discovering various shapes hiding in nature? If you have children, you don’t have a choice — kids love it, so you have to love it too. As adults, however, we often forget to have fun and enjoy the simple things in life. Many adults take life much too seriously (as if being angry and frustrated were helping in achieving our goals)

I don’t have kids, but I’ve two NDEs, so I see life differently than “normal people”. I love finding various shapes, and I play the game with Daisy! We have to be careful Grumpy George doesn’t catch us because he hates it. He always tells me, “This is serious work, and you are wasting your time on some stupid games! Work is work; it should be done in a serious manner! And then, when the job is completed, you have time to relax”.

No, I disagree. What if I die on the job?! Just in case, I chose to have fun first. Ultimately, life is about fun, joy, and simply making the best of what we have. Most of the time we spend working, so… why don’t have fun doing it? It’s our choice if we see work as a chore or as a fun game. I love working on the farm, and I see it as just a game. Life is just a game!

And so, while playing with the plants, Daisy and I discovered the following shapes: the first was a piece of cheese cut from a giant cheese wheel. Then we found a crocodile head — while I moved the crowbar under the rock, it would open and close like the jaws of a crocodile hiding underwater. Daisy would bark at it, and we just had fun!

Okay, back to work. So the next step was to find the perfect spots for the next couple of plants and prepare the suitable “craters”. To my surprise, digging these holes wasn’t as challenging as I thought — it took only just over a couple of hours for both of them.

By the way, a few of my visitors asked me, “Where do you get all the rocks to build your garden walls?”. I find this question funny because I live on top of a rock! I just dig them out from the ground…

To clarify, I am not getting rocks to build my walls, but I am building the walls because I have no idea what to do with all the rocks I get out of the ground! If you need bigger stones, you are welcome to come and collect some — you get them for free!

After the holes were made, it was time to soak them, get the plants and some dirt from the yard next to Shed 1, and fill the craters with lovely, nourishing soil to ensure the young plants had a good start.

As it usually is in life, not always everything goes to plan, not to mention that cutting corners hardly ever works in our favour…

This time, the second load of dirt caused me a slight inconvenience (luckily, it was just an inconvenience and not something more serious). I wanted to finish the job quicker, and to save time, I overloaded the wheelbarrow, hoping I wouldn’t need to go back to the yard for the third load.

Oh well, it turned out the wheelbarrow was much too heavy for me, and though I was able to somehow push it to the ‘garden on the rock’, as soon as I got on the slope, I struggled to control it. I was almost at the hole when suddenly the wheelbarrow took control and… all the dirt was on the ground next to the hole. This was very annoying; nonetheless, I was more grateful than upset because when the wheelbarrow was falling over, I was still desperately trying to gain control, and as a result, one of the handles hit me in the face. It could easily break my jaw, but it didn’t, so I was lucky. I ended up with a small bruise, which could easily be hidden under some makeup. (Otherwise, I’m not sure how I would explain bruises on my face in my “real work”)

The job, however, took longer than it would if I just took it step-by-step and didn’t overload the wheelbarrow. Oh well, I collected as much of the dirt as I could and placed it into the hole. Then I walked back to the yard to get more soil and finally put the plant into the ground.

After the first plant was done, it was time to plant the second one.

This went smoothly without any particular adventures. I soaked the hole, filled it with soil, put the plant in, spread a couple of wheelbarrows of wood chips around it and… voila, all done!

Lessons Learned

Though in this article (Part 1 and 2), in a humorous way, I described some of my activities on the farm, many of the lessons I learned can be useful in our everyday life, even if living far away from any farms and gardens:

Lesson 1: We can have the best intentions, but life doesn’t go to plan, and we will face adversities. We can get angry about it, or we can accept it, move on and try to make the best out of what we have.

Lesson 2: We can concentrate on how challenging and impossible the task at hand is, or we can get excited by the vision of our project/goal and enjoy the work. Yes, I know, it’s crazy to plant anything on the rocks, but… when I compare the land how it looked when I bought it and how it is now — it was definitely worth all the hard work and all the hick-ups along the way.

Lesson 3: It doesn’t matter how simple the task appears to be, it is always worth concentrating on what we are doing and giving it some thought before we start working on it. It can save us a lot of time and effort.

Lesson 4: When working in a team, we need to consider that every member works in different ways, and not everyone is like us. Furthermore, it’s essential to be flexible in our work and, if necessary, find ways around instead of insisting on our ways and wasting precious time.

Even more importantly, regardless of which tasks we are performing, whether we are the C-level manager or help desk member, each job is equally important and deserves the same respect.

Yes, my team was just my dog, who occasionally got into my way and was disturbing, but instead of getting angry with her, I played with her, had short breaks and enjoyed the time. And it is the attitude I use at my “real job”, where leadership skills are essential.

Lesson 5: Whatever you do, enjoy it! Everything is a matter of perception. I could whinge about how hard working on the farm is, but I chose to enjoy it and transfer it into a fun game and entertaining story. Yes, life on a farm is hard work, but it is also a lot of fun! It all depends on how we look at it.

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