When my grandmother died, I inherited her garden journal. Fifty years of meticulous notes about what she planted, what thrived and what failed.
The first pages contained carefully recorded temperatures, rainfall amounts and harvest yields. But what struck me most came near the middle of the journal. A whole section titled “Failed Experiments.”
Here, her handwriting loosened. Notes became more animated. “Tried planting moonflowers next to tomatoes. Disaster! Tomatoes stunted, moonflowers withered.”
And then, beside each failure: questions. Dozens of them. “Was the soil too acidic? Did they compete for the same nutrients? Should I have planted them farther apart?”
One page particularly caught my eye. She’d tried growing a rare orchid variety and failed three seasons in a row. Three consecutive seasons of failures, and still she didn’t give up? The third entry ended with: “Failed again. But I think I understand why now.”
The next season’s entry showed a photograph of the most beautiful orchid I’d ever seen.
I called my mother that night. “Did Grandma ever talk about her ‘Failed Experiments’ section?”
Mom laughed. “That was her favorite part of gardening. She called those pages her ‘treasure map.’ “Any fool could follow instructions,” she used to say, “but only the curious can discover something new.”
Over the years, I’ve often thought about that journal, especially during my own failures: the career path I abandoned, the relationship that ended, and the opportunities I was too afraid to pursue.
From my grandmother, I learned not just how to garden, but how to remain curious when things fall apart.
The world tells us failure is the end of something. But my grandmother knew better. She knew failure is just the soil where questions grow. And questions are the seeds of every breakthrough.
When she died, my grandmother wasn’t remembered for her perfect garden. She was remembered for creating an entirely new hybrid orchid that now grows in botanical gardens across the country. An orchid that emerged only after years of beautiful failures.
My grandmother has taught me that my next failure isn’t a stop sign but a starting line. The most extraordinary discoveries don’t come from knowing all the answers. They come from falling in love with the questions.
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