Cheerful and Resilient: The Power of the Seasonal Landscape

Arizona in bloom

There is nothing like going away to help me appreciate my home and my farm. It is always hard to get ready to leave, to make all the arrangements necessary to keep the farm going, but the time away energizes me for the season ahead. This trip was no different. Seeing the power of the seasonal landscape in a far different setting was a powerful reminder to look for its magic at home.

Last week I traveled to Arizona to visit my son, who spends six weeks every year working at baseball spring training. This year, the trip coincided with the burst of desert wildflowers all over the Arizona mountainside. As we hiked some of the steep trails in and around Phoenix, I was aghast over the vibrant wildflowers, saturated colors of orange, sunshine yellow, and cerulean blue. As I admired their explosive power, I felt sure I had grasped a new understanding of the word cheerful.

Brittlebush

Cheerful, as I’ve always understood it in the past, when used to describe a person, included a hint of inauthenticity. One online dictionary includes the caution that “if you describe someone's attitude as cheerful, you mean they are not worried about something, and you think that they should be.” I guess that explains why, when, in my younger days, people said I was cheerful, I was confused whether it was a compliment or not.

Desert Bluebells

There was no denying it. These flowers were cheerful. They emerged out of the most unlikely landscape, rock and sand, to create color, movement, and surprise. Their vibrant colors were more than cheerful. When I looked up the names of these unfamiliar blooms, they included words like hedgehog cactus, creosote bush, and bristly fiddleneck, names that captured the toughness necessary to survive in their environment. They burst forth out of the earth to grow strong and tall despite 50 degree temperature swings and gusty winds. I thought about how sharply they contrasted with the flowers I had at home—tiny, tender seedlings, under lights, carefully watered with nettle tea and eggshell extract to try and give them the best start at life, seedlings that I had and would continue to spend hours babying and preparing for a life outdoors.  These wildflowers had something in addition to cheerful to add to their resume. They were also resilient.

I was reminded that cheerful and resilient could coexist and suddenly it was a combination that I inspired to embrace. I love to bask in the warmth of cheerful. Who doesn’t prefer to be in the company of someone who is cheerful, as opposed to morose? With all the talk of toxic positivity, I feel like cheerful has gotten a downgrade.  Coupled with resilient, however, now that seems like an unstoppable combination, and one that I could emulate in my own life. It is possible that focussing on my own resilience might even foster the cheerful. My walk among the desert wildflowers gave me a framework for the spring me, a ladder to climb out of the winter funk. Like those wildflowers, I aspire to be cheerful and resilient. I’m going to appreciate all the blooming buds, but not fret over all the many plants that will not thrive. There is always another chance to grow again.

Strawberry hedgehog cactus

I love how the natural world offers up these observations. It reminded of something Douglas O. Wilson once said about the wilderness (although I believe it’s applicable to much of the natural world), “it’s existence help[s] preserve man’s capacity for wonder . . . the power to feel, if not see, the miracles of life, of beauty and of harmony around us.” Seeing the desert wildflowers reminded me of way of being in the world that I wanted to recapture. It reminded me of the power of flowers to inspire a deep breath and an invitation to be present.  It reminded me of those soon to be cheerful flowers at home, and the power of all seasonal flowers to create these moments of pause and reflection even when travel to far and unusual destinations isn’t possible.  

Soon my field will be covered with frilly nigella, stately snapdragons, and aromatic herbs, followed closely by determinedly cheerful sunflowers, colorful zinnias, then dahlias and celosia. Although they don’t spring effortlessly from the desert, they embody their own kind of resilience, growing in an open field, in the season nature planned for them, providing nourishment to all kinds of insects and offering the ability to stop me in my tracks to admire their beauty and magic.