A couple weekends ago we went to one of my favorite places to pick fresh flowers in the cutting fields. Ever since we moved to Pittsburgh, Simmons has been our go-to local farm. I like that it’s compact and easy to shop at, plus there are animals that the little ones can visit. If you’re local to Pittsburgh there’s still time to go for the pick your own flowers. It’s open until the first frost of the season, and with temperatures rising again this week you can definitely squeeze in a visit.

All the fall activities start September 16th so it’ll be the best of both worlds, everything from fresh flower picking to apple picking to pumpkins and mums! It’s such a great time of the year. Scroll down to see more of our visit and read my thoughts on a quote from a favorite childhood story.

“If you look at it the right way, the whole world is a garden” -Frances Hodgson Bernett, The Secret Garden

When I posted one of these photos to instagram I used this quote as the caption and didn’t elaborate on it at all, but wanted to do so here on my blog. Have you ever read the book or watched the movie The Secret Garden? It’s one of my childhood favorites and recently I was thinking about this quote. At first I thought, right now- no, the world is definitely not a garden and this quote is all unicorns and butterflies. With all the problems and negativity happening in our world I just didn’t get it. Go ahead, turn on the tv and instantly see the problems and chaos in this world, it’s enough that I actually make an effort to not watch the news. Then it was bothering me, so I started thinking about it more, what the actual analogy meant… that’s when it started to make sense to me.

Yes, a garden is beautiful, but someone put forth the effort when no one was watching to make it beautiful. Someone cleared the land, prepped the soil, planted seeds and watered them. It didn’t just magically happen.

First, if you do nothing all you’ll have is weeds, or grass or mud. You can’t expect to have a bounty if you don’t put forth the effort. **EXPECTATIONS**

Second, a garden doesn’t grow right away. Usually perennial plants take at least three years to establish roots and grow to their full potential, taking into account that they have no external issues like bugs or weather. If you plant annuals, they are beautiful right away, but they don’t come back every year and you have to keep replanting them yearly. **PATIENCE**

Third, nobody will make you plant a garden and take care of it. It’s up to you, and you have to do it because you want to. **MOTIVATION**

So that’s my takeaway, and for some reason this all really resonated with me lately. Some gardens are nicer than others, some people have gardens and others don’t, and sometimes you find gardens in the most unexpected places. But whatever it may be, we are responsible for what we put out into the world, and we can make it a garden or leave it as a field of weeds.

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