Planting Seeds - Motivation Monday

Planting Seeds

It's spring here at JumbleBerry Farm and seeds are sprouting in the starting room. We have cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower , tomatoes, herbs and lots of other great things.

 The seeds are in warm moist soil where they can sprout and be ready to go into the ground in a few weeks.  

What does your warm moist soil look like?  

If you want to sprout and grow, you need to make sure you put yourself in warm moist soil so the hard shell of the seed can crack open and sprout. Then those seeds need to stay warm and moist and receive nourishment to stay alive and begin to grow.  

A creative person needs inspiration, motivation, and time. Warm, moist, soil.

 Inspiration of what to create, the motivation to work through to completion and the time to 'gittr done'.  

(Perennial Peonies pushing their way up through the soil right now)

(This is what those red stems will become in May)

Creativity, like seeds can't be rushed.

 It doesn't look like anything is happening, and then, up pops a little green stem with a seed stuck on it like a cap.

 It stretches toward the light as it starts the growing process. 

The flat the seedlings are in will need to be turned every day or the plant will not grow evenly and will be permanently deformed and probably will never bare fruit. The seedlings will stretch and stretch and finally fall back to the soil and die, usually before it gets its second set of leaves. 

It was too one-sided.

 As it grew, it only grew on one side. One side grew tall and the other side grew weak.

 The weak side pulled down the strong side. 

Isn't it interesting that the weak side won

 and not the strong side. 

(If you want to pick fruit someday, you have to get the seedlings up, strong, and then into good ground to reap the rewards.)

There's lots of parts in this analogy. But just like seeds need warm moist soil, it also needs to be in the right conditions. Creative people also need their own kind of warm moist soil and they also need to be turned so they are not one sided. So they are not brought down by the weak side.  

Apricot trees in bloom.

They almost always get frozen out in the spring

by that one night that gets cold after blooms like

 these open up.

(Last night was such a night, so we'll see if they made it later)

How can we strengthen our weak side? Trying new things, read new books, create new subjects, try new mediums, find new inspiration. Creativity can grow into a large plant and bare fruit for a long time, but only if we don't stifle it and hold it back and keep it in a box. Creativity needs to be encouraged and nourished and let loose.

We all have our own weak sides, but we cannot and should not let them rule our strong side.  

When we are aware of our "weak" side, 

we can work on it to help it become one of our strong sides.

My weak side has always been drawing

and painting figures.

This was not a first effort, or even a 10th effort.  This was after a 6-week course where I drew every day.  After I became aware of what pencils did what, how to create shadows and highlights, finally I was able to do something I was happy with.

There's only one way to overcome that.

Yep!

By drawing more and painting figures.

This was my first attempt at painting figures.

Yes, I chose something with no face,

but everyone in my family knows who this is.

This was after I had done all my other grandkids, including this little guy Josh and started back through them again.

It's very far from a good likeness of him, but I see him in parts of it, so I was very happy with that.

I have made a goal to draw my grandkids daily.

I love them.

They are adorable.

So, getting a drawing to look like them will be "fun".

Right?

I will learn from my drawings and sketches

how to do it better.

What is your weak side and how can you strengthen it.

During April, we will talk about growing ourselves

just like growing all sorts of seeds for Motivation Monday.

For Workin Wednesday, we will be working on skies, clouds,

sunsets and sunrises.

Hope you're going to join us.

If you didn't receive this in your inbox,

well great, glad we found each other.

If you don't want to miss out on anything this month,

scroll back up to the top right hand side and there is a box that says "Subscribe to my blog", (pretty straightforward).  

Put your email in that box and then you will receive an email confirming you did actually sign up

(and it wasn't some Russian bot).

Click on that link.

Finally you really should drag that email into your primary folder so it doesn't get lost in promotional

purgatory.  It will ask if you want to do that for all future emails and you should click yes!

Boom!

You're done!

Now you won't miss a thing.

Don't forget to leave a comment below on your own weak side, or how you can make your weak side your strong side.

Have a great week!