From SRP author Mark Posey:
A few weeks ago, I spent several days in the backyard building raised garden beds. Twenty of them.
There were moments when I wondered if I’d lost my mind. The boards were heavy. The screws never seemed to be where I needed them. The measuring tape kept disappearing. Every time I thought I was finished, there seemed to be another trip to the hardware store waiting for me.
Eventually, though, the beds were built. The soil was hauled in. The seeds were planted.
And then I waited.
That’s the funny thing about planting anything. Most of the work happens long before you see any results. You put seeds into the ground and trust that something is happening beneath the surface.
A few days later, the spinach appeared. Then the lettuce. The zucchini wasn’t far behind.
Every morning now, I wander out to the garden with a cup of coffee and look for signs of life. Tiny leaves that weren’t there yesterday. Plants that have somehow doubled in size overnight. Evidence that all that digging, hauling, and planting wasn’t for nothing.
The longer I work in the garden, the more I realize how much of life works exactly the same way. When I started writing novels, I had no idea where that first story would lead. I certainly didn’t imagine that it would eventually become a publishing company, hundreds of books, thousands of readers, and a career that would allow Tracy and me the freedom we’ve enjoyed for the last several years. At the time, it was just a seed.
When Tracy and I started Stories Rule Press, that was another seed. We couldn’t see what it would become. We only knew that it felt worth planting. Friendships are seeds. Relationships are seeds. Habits are seeds.
Even the small decisions we make every day can turn into something much larger than we ever expected.
The truth is that very few of the important things in our lives arrive fully formed. Most begin as something small, uncertain, and easy to overlook. A packet of seeds. A first chapter. A conversation. An idea. A chance taken when there are no guarantees.
We plant them anyway. Sometimes they fail. Sometimes they surprise us. And sometimes they grow into things that change our lives.
Standing in the garden this spring, watching those first green shoots push through the soil, I’ve been reminded that growth is often invisible until suddenly it isn’t. The things we plant today may take weeks, months, or even years before we understand what they were really growing into. But that doesn’t make the planting any less worthwhile. If anything, it makes it more so.
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Those thoughts are part of what inspired The Summer Garden, my new Sunday serial on Substack. On the surface it’s about a retired widower and a community garden. Underneath, it’s about grief, friendship, second chances, and the things we plant in our lives without always knowing what they’ll become.
If that sounds like your kind of story, I’d love for you to join us.
— Mark