🍁 garden club tonight @ 7pm! 🍁

& notes from my life

hello dear friends -

is anyone else paddling as hard as they can, and realizing they’ve been trying to reach the other side of the ocean rather than the neighborhood pool?

i am bruised all over from shooting the second arrow lately (although not as bruised as my friend rebekah who keeps a mounted marlin in her basement and ran into it yesterday, stabbing a hole in her leg???) and wondering why my -desire- to accomplish something does not translate to my -ability- to accomplish it.

forgive me for treating this newsletter like my morning pages today, but i have not written in so long and using this time for myself is the best i can do today.

september has been a month of emotional upheaval from me my entire life. this is the month me and my body have lost family, moved across the country alone not once but three times, have left jobs, have started new jobs, have eloped, have survived a tornado, bought a home, been cheated on, had close friends move away, and so much more. every big thing that happens to me happens in september, and me and my little body always brace for impact.

i need what feels like an infinite amount of cheerleading right now and so i am offering it to myself.

i am proud of my ability to create a successful fine gardening & landscape company in only one year’s time.

i am proud of my ability to manage design, scheduling, sourcing, and installation of well over 25 gardens at a time — and during a kitchen renovation at that.

i am proud of my ability to stay on top of my emails, dms, texts, and phone calls 98% of the time.

i am proud that sometimes i remember to take lovely photos, write down my reflections, and go lay on the ground to feel it on my skin.

i am proud of my (new) ability to prioritize my friendships, my brothers, and to make new friends, even when i am exhausted.

i am proud of my ability to incorporate homeowners into my garden crew for the purpose of creating joy and education when no other company i’ve ever met does this, because it is harder but worth it. i am proud of my good sense to pay extra $ each month to be over-insured to protect them.

i am proud that i have a financial advisor, a cpa, and a quickbooks specialist and that i pay my taxes properly and do my own books and provide transparent invoicing and send invoices promptly and have not fallen behind.

i am proud of my commitment to spend what little extra $ i have this week on pumpkins, which is quite silly, but also worth it — because fall is my favorite time of year and it is fleeting.

i am proud of the herculean effort it took yesterday to create a larger fenced in area for my chickens when i really thought i was so tired i might die and just wanted to watch love island.

i am proud of sticking to monthly garden club for 1 entire year.

i am proud of the grace i am extending to myself about how much fast food i’m eating lately without a kitchen and being on job sites or driving to pick up plants 4 days out of the week.

i am thankful for my exhaustion and the veil that it lifts. i see it on everyone around me, especially wives and mothers, and it is a magnetic club that we have all gained admission to and we offer one another understanding and hold back all judgement.

i am proud that i have not used my truck to drive anyone off the side of the road despite being the recipient of road rage multiple times a day every single day and my god, as a society we need to address this crisis but how?

i will try to focus on all my achievements this week because what i currently focus on is how disappointed i am that have not written this newsletter weekly, that i have abandoned my own garden, that i am not kinder to my husband, that i watch too much tiktok, that i haven’t even made any tiktoks lately, that there are gardens all over town i wanted to check on and i haven’t, that i still have not chosen paint colors for my kitchen walls, that i have not set better boundaries to protect my weekends, that my relationship with money is still eroding me, that i stopped taking cold showers, that i paused my classes, that i haven’t driven to charlotte or green cove lately to see my friends that are like family, that my house is always a mess and i think it will be a mess until i die.

garden club is on zoom tonight at 7pm est and i promise i won’t be a bummer! it is really such a nice time to pause everything else in life and think of the garden, and what is happening with the planet, and talk about what we want to do outside in the upcoming month. 📅

tonight we will be talking about (a) if you can still plant anything (b) what to do with empty garden beds over winter (c) what to do with your potted plants (d) planting potatoes, onions, & garlic, (e) dividing perennials, (f) what NOT to do this month (g) what to do before first frost and as always, trying to predict when we will have said first frost. 🥶

to join virtual garden club, just become a paid subscriber and you can read more about it here :)

until next time, which i genuinely hope is so much sooner -

lauren xo