HIGH EXPECTATIONS

Hanging out in my flower beds at our homestead every summer has become a favorite pastime of mine. 

It's been fun cultivating, planting, digging and watching what comes out of the ground every spring and summer.

Some of my plants over the years have turned out exactly as I expected and others have been quite a surprise. 

[ Much like this hydrangea that was blue when I purchased it. ]

In many ways, my flower beds have been very comparable to life. I've cultivated, planted, dug and watched myself grow over the years.

Some of my life has turned out exactly the way I expected it and other events have been quite a surprise. 

Some of these surprises have been the outcome of the wrong expectations.

[ Such as expecting my flowers to be full and bountiful the moment I sink them in the ground. ]

I think it's human nature to expect things to happen a certain way or within a particular time frame. 

However, much like my flower beds, we need to sit back and enjoy the growing process. 

[Our lives, similar to my flower beds, require a lot of cultivating, planting, digging and watching.]

I believe it's okay to have high expectations and high standards, but are they within means of your available time and other resources? Once your expectations and standards become unrealistic, you're automatically setting yourself up for failure. I see some of the most successful people fail themselves all the time. They don't concentrate on how much they have accomplished. They concentrate on how much they didn't accomplish. They're never happy or satisfied because it's merely impossible for them to be.

I'm constantly letting myself down every summer as we never, ever, and I mean EVER tackle our ginormous summer to-do list. From putting rock around the pond, to tearing down more fence and planting a few more trees... it all gets moved to next summer and eventually the one after that. 

And you know what? I'm beginning to realize that, that's okay. 

As long as we are doing the best we can, crops are in the ground growing and our home doesn't look like an episode off of Hoarders, I think we are doing pretty good. 

I've decided that this summer, it's not about how much we get done, it's about how much we grow.

So, if once again, I forget to put the coffee grounds underneath my hydrangea plant so the flowers are  blue all summer, that's okay. They're still growing.

[ I use a Keurig anyways. I'd have to murder a lot of K-cups. ]