Tending Life’s Garden

One of the things I enjoy doing is taking care of the flowers on my front porch and tending to the few houseplants I have. I enjoy the color they bring to the home entryway, and people often comment on how pretty the flowers look.
It’s not hard to do. These annual flowers bloom, look great for a while, and then start to lose their color and die. As they fade, I simply pull them out and replace them with something new, and the planters look great again. It’s really simple to keep my porch flowers fresh. Tending to a garden and enjoying healthy, beautiful flowers is just one of the blessings of life for many. This is why the gardening industry appears to be thriving. People invest money in things they see value in.

We also have a few very hearty indoor plants. They have been around for many years. Recently I have come to appreciate the importance that a couple of these plants have in my life history.

One is a huge plant that my mom, who passed away many years ago, gave us as an open house gift when we moved into our large screen-printing showroom and office facility more than 20 years ago. The plant is still going strong. It came with a little foam bird that is quite thrashed looking now, but I keep it in there just to commemorate the grand opening memory. That was a milestone in the life of my business.

Through the years, a couple of other longer-term potted plants did die, but new plants have replaced them. In my life’s illustration world, the actual life of our business is reflected in our plant’s life history. Team members, who were a part of the business, both good and bad, have come and gone. Marketing strategies have changed and, like plants that grow and branch out, we have continued to grow and move into new directions.