Cutting Back, Something My Petunias Taught me About Life

Recently, Like Bob, I started gardening full scale at my house. Mostly vegetables, in fact, I’ve really only successfully ever grown things I could eat. About a month ago I stumbled on some beautiful magenta petunias in the store and I absolutely adore that color (because its a color our brain absolutely makes up more on that here.)

To my horror about a week ago I walked outside to water the garden and noticed my beautiful petunias were brown and dead. What happened? I had been watering them daily with the rest of my garden? Had they outgrown the pot? Too much sun? Too little sun? I was absolutely heartbroken. I know they’re a perennial but I thought I’d get to keep the plant a little longer.

Everyone around me told me to just throw it out and do better next time but I just couldn’t. So like the millenial go-getter I am I went straight to youtube and learned my plant actually wasn’t dead, yet. 

What it needed was something that didn’t make much sense at first and I thought, surely this can’t be right? Right? It needed to be cut back. All the dead blooms, dead vines, leaves all of that had to go because it was killing the rest of the plant. If I trimmed it back it would bloom again. I had to really fight all my instincts because I was sure if the plant wasn’t already dead, this was going to kill it.

However… It didn’t. Today I walked outside to two new blooms and small new buds forming along the places where I had cut. Now, Heather, what’s the point of this? Lately, I’ve been in a really introspective mood about life. It’s probably the full moon recently or something to do with me being a Virgo. Either Way, I realized the petunia was a lesson I needed to take into my own life in more ways than one. Often we carry with us things that are no longer making our life bloom and they’re taking our energy and joy away. It’s better even if its scary to cut back a little so that new blooms can form. These things can be friendships, partnerships, a job, a hobby that no longer interests you, that box of junk that stresses you out in the attic… anything really thats draining you and burning you out.

I hope this little story about my garden was helpful to someone, and Happy Gardening!

Heather Furr

Heather is the pink haired digital director of the Bob & Sheri Team, She helps out with our Video, Livestreams, Social Media, Tech issues, Podcasting and so much more! Heather is cat & lizard mom from North Carolina who whenever she's not fighting with the Facebook algorithm or bullying wordpress is probably gardening, reading or playing videogames!