Dirty Nails: A Gardening (and occasionally Grief) Substack

A fellow gardener recommended this Bex Finch's Substack to me and I've really loved it these last few weeks. Yesterday's rumination on attention vs grip for seasons among plants and life was particularly poignant:

I’m trying to learn the difference between attention and grip. Attention is what you give the coneflower that just opened this morning, the one that wasn’t there Tuesday. Grip is wanting it to still be blooming in September. The garden teaches attention constantly, all season, for free, if I let it. It is far less interested in teaching me how to let go, mostly because letting go isn’t actually what’s happening out there. Nothing is being let go of—it’s just moving, the way it was always going to move.

I keep asking it to hold still anyway.

The garden keeps answering the same way:

Keep looking.

There’s something else opening.

Highly recommend.