“The best relationships aren’t the ones that look perfect right away. They’re the ones that become something over time.”

There’s no store front for friendships. Friendships take time to build. They often come with setbacks too. But over time, common threads connect people, and relationships take shape.

“We don’t pick our friends off of a shelf and get instant gratification. If anything, they require time and effort.”

In this episode, I take a look at the parallels between building friendships and native plant gardening, emphasizing patience, effort, and growth over time.

Today I saw my first tiger swallowtail of the season. The butterfly flew across the deck and over the roofline. But here’s what I keep thinking about—before that butterfly, there was a caterpillar. Awkward. Slow. Nothing about a caterpillar announces what it’s becoming. Same thing with the chrysalis that it was all winter in leaf litter, or hidden in the bark of a tree. Completely unassuming.

Like a friendship in year one.

Like me in 2016, confidently mispronouncing “monarda fistulosa” and having no idea what a host plant was.

When I first started planting native species, they looked unassuming & messy—nothing like the perfect nursery.

You can't buy a friendship off a shelf already in bloom. You can't rush a caterpillar either.

Find more to this story and the friendship I am celebrating over here on Substack. (It's free!)