My Garden, My Love

Hello, my name is Jordan, I am a 28-year old whose biggest obsession is his garden. I love flowers, I love helping them grow, taking care of them, and giving them to people who need them. A flower may not seem valuable or a present of huge importance, but then again it all depends on what you consider to be valuable. For me it's the intention behind the flower, the flower simply represents my intentions, for others, a flower may not represent anything, in fact, it might just be meaningless. Then again, if words can change people's lives, a simple act of kindness and compassion might do more, it might change someone's perspective on life, help them solve a big dilemma, empower them to do something they have been avoiding for a long time, and so on. After all, random small strokes can form a beautiful big picture. However, the rarity of something specifically does not make it more special than others, being different or rare alone can make one special, but not more necessarily more special than others. These are the ideals that I gained after a certain incident that happened only two years ago.

Every day I used to get up early in the morning, work out, take a shower, have breakfast, and head straight to work. I am a journalist, so I am able to work from home, although sometimes I have to travel, which is not a problem because I'm not away so long that my plants will suffer from it. Once I came back I devoted most of my time to taking care of my garden, I had everything from orchids, to roses, from sunflowers to tulips and dahlias too. It was my little paradise, and I liked to share it with others, so when they were fully grown and I had obtained more of their seeds I would go out and randomly hand out flowers to strangers. I would receive all types of reactions. some were weirded out, some were happy to receive them, some refused to take them, some insisted on paying me for them, and I refused to accept their money, but some of them insisted so much I was forced to take their money. One day I came back from my stroll and I found quite a new sprout growing in the corner of the garden. It looked quite like the roses so I left it alone and tended to it like any other flower, but about a week later I noticed it was different from perfumed roses, or the extravagant tulips, or the shiny sunflowers, or the gorgeous orchids. This flower looked big and it wasn't even close to the climax of its existence, so it had a lot to grow still. At first, I thought that it was quite common and I was just making a big deal out of it, but the more I looked for what it was, the less I found. I spent like this, obsessing over this strange flower growing in my garden for about another week until I found an article online that talked about weird or rather, "rare" types of flowers all around the world. I almost had a heart attack when I found out that the "weird" flower growing in my garden was none other than the rarest flower in the world, the Middlemist Red. I panicked, I didn't know what to do, I didn't even know if I was taking proper care of it. At one point I considered telling my friends or even saying something on the discord server that other gardeners had formed and I had joined; however, I did not, something stopped me and to this day I am sure that I made the right choice.

From that day my life changed, I didn't make a fortune from it or become famous, but I felt blessed for having the opportunity to take care of this wonderful gift. I was in love with this flower now, I thought that taking care of it would be very expensive yet it turned it out, this was not the case at all. Simply watering it and showing the proper love it deserved was enough for it to reach its maximum potential. I was still enticed, it was special, I had a treasure in my garden, and now watering my flowers took a different meaning, it was the best part of my day. As the days passed I fell further and further in love with this wonder and got to see it grow into a majestic masterpiece from which I could take pride saying I nurtured it and helped it grow. More days passed by and I started to notice some plants in my garden were dying, I was a bit shocked but didn't pay much attention to it and kept watering my plants, especially my treasure.

Eventually, I stopped going on my strolls to distribute flowers and spending time with my shiny sunflowers, or extravagant tulips, or perfumed roses, or gorgeous orchids, instead I focused solely focused on my Middlemist. A couple of weeks passed and The Middlemist started to die, I got worried, its glow was fading and its life was ending right before me and I didn't know what to do, or even what I had done wrong. After I calmed down and sat down to think I realized that more than half of my garden was dying if not already dead. It hit me that the reason my Middlemist Red was dying was that I ruined the environment, and the reason my garden was dying, was because I wasn't paying enough attention to it. My garden's value was revealed to me that day. Every flower was special to me, all of them from the most common to the Middlemist Red. I worked it thoroughly, I had to take some days off of work but it didn't bother me, this was my priority. Everything worked together, all the flowers, the soil, the water, and the weather were all key components, and each of them individually was special in themselves. The Middlemist Red saw many flowers grow and many more leave the garden, I resumed my strolls and to my surprise many people that I would usually give flowers to asked me how I was and why I had missed so many days of work, on top of that they were happy to see me.