Today’s almost-daily dispatch comes to you with sore muscles and dirt under my fingernails. I have spent the better part of the day working outside. This post is also outside of my normal blog schedule and a bit of a side quest. But aren’t the side quests often better than the final destination anyway? Grab your garden clogs, fellow traveler, I have a tale to tell.

In my not-so-humble opinion, once spring hits in the Pacific Northwest, we enter a race toward fall at a breakneck sprint. In other areas of the country with more moderate weather patterns, the growing season lingers; here, it hustles. Growing up in the very arid, very hot, high desert of Southern California, the growing season was long, but the heat was relentless and I wanted no part of it.

But here in Washington, once the first “fake spring” day hits, all of the retail stores flood their aisles with this season’s must-haves. Fairy lights, seed packets, stepping stones, bark—the temptations go on and on.

One of the benefits of being a Spark Delivery driver for Walmart means that I am in my local store a few days per week. I am able to track items as they travel through the “discounted trajectory”—slowly getting marked down until they make their final stand in the aisle of clearance doom. One such item I kept my eye on was spring bulbs. When it was all said and done, I bought a metric ton of discounted bulbs at one dollar per bag.

I live by a simple rule: “If one is good, 52 is better.”

Naturally, I bought at least 52 bags.

That, my fellow travelers, was weeks ago. I got home, sunk a few gladiolas in a pre-existing garden bed, and my hyper-fixation flitted away—as ADHD fixations tend to do once you get a smidge of task gratification.

However, today, while puttering in the yard, humming a little tune, very aware of my time and energy constraints (feeling very proud of myself for this, by the way), my mind briefly flitted. And then it fluttered. Flittered and fluttered back to the bags of bulbs that had been casually cast aside in the garage.

“Maybe I better go check on those,” my rational brain whispered.

I made my way into the garage and did a quick scan to recall where I’d stashed them. I found the bag of bulb bags (if you have any “ism” at all, I know you relate to the bag of bags) and peered through the cellophane.

The gasp I gasped as I saw the pale green growth emerging from the bulbs, fighting against all odds to reach even the slightest sliver of sun!

“Life finds a way.” Out of the dark recesses of my mind, Jeff Goldblum harkened forth, uttering words of wisdom wrapped in condemnation.

Suddenly, it wasn’t just about the bulbs anymore. My deep-seated codependency kicked in—the thought of being a “bulb killer” or a “bad plant mom” was more than I could bear. I couldn’t live with the silent judgment of a thousand shriveled lilies.

Beyond the guilt, there was the pride: I was absolutely unwilling to admit that I hadn’t made the most of my bargain-basement deals. To let a dollar bag of bulbs go to waste would be to admit defeat to the “aisle of clearance doom.”

There was too much on the line. I couldn’t just plant a few; I had to save them all.

I charged ahead, fueled by a manic burst of “fix-it” energy, determined to get all five million, three thousand, six hundred and seventy-two bulbs in the ground in under two hours. Okay, maybe I am being a touch dramatic—maybe it wasn’t quite that many—but in that moment, staring down the bag of bags, it felt like a botanical census.

Looking at this survivor in my hand—blanched white from the darkness but refusing to quit—I realized we were in this together. It spent weeks in a plastic tomb and still reached for a sky it couldn’t see. The least I could do was provide the dirt.

Life finds a way, my fellow sojourners, life finds a way.