ramblings from an arkansas farm girl
Good morning, Sunday Letter friends!
I’m still here — in case you were wondering. (And also in case you weren’t. 😊) If you’ve reached out lately wondering why my newsletters went quiet, my apologies. It’s not that you stopped receiving them… it’s that I stopped writing them.
I’m fixing that today.
And there’s much to report.
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A brand new year has me thinking about gardening goals, and I decided to jot down a few that are important to me. While doing this, I realized what I was really doing was writing a garden mission statement. Yes, I do love a good mission statement. Old habits die hard (or don’t die at all.) Business plans, year-end summaries, new budgets, spreadsheets, etc.—that was such a big part of my world once upon a time. Still is, in a way.
Is that weird?
I don’t think so. (And who cares, anyway?) I’ve reached the age of not worrying about being thought of as weird.
“We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours,
we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.” ―
If you consider the reasons for having a mission statement of any sort, you’ll see how it can be a good thing. A business mission statement helps define an organization, setting forth its core values and beliefs, while encouraging a bit of goal-setting for the future. We do a similar thing when we choose our word of the year, right?
A garden is an organization too. A vital one, in fact. After all, without pollinators we can say goodbye to blueberries in our oatmeal. Who wants a strawberry-less strawberry cake? A salad without tomatoes or root vegetables? No thanks.
So yes, writing a garden mission statement is a fantastic way to kick off a new gardening year. And even though our space in town is not large, the members of our organization are a diverse variety of flora, fauna, and fungi, each with different wants and needs. And, for as long as my husband and I are entrusted with this space, understanding and fostering our members’ needs is important to us.
So yeah, I like the idea of it.
A garden mission statement was harder to write than I imagined.Continue Reading
There’s something extra special about the final days of a year. Not loud. Not confetti-covered. Just a quiet pause—a moment to look back and consider what comes next.
Oh, 2025 has been a lot, hasn’t it? Wonderful in many ways (at the very top of that list: welcoming our first grandchild 💛). And heartbreaking + horrifying in others. (Turn on the BBC, and it doesn’t take long to see how fragile our world is.)
As this year tucks itself in, I keep thinking about what 2025 taught me—not through headlines or tidy resolutions, but in the slow, ordinary ways of living and noticing.
Do you do this too? Looking back can be a helpful thing.
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