Failure for the Win

Behold, my bountiful flax field! Look at those tall, luscious stalks, just barely turning yellow at the base and all the delicate blue flowers! See it? No?

That is because this is is my field-of-many-weeds from our first Spring at the Fool X the World. What a fantastic learning experience and spectacular failure!

As a society, we use “failure” in a negative context like a dirty word, but the truth is, failure should be celebrated. Yes, I’m serious. We should embrace failure with excitement and joy.

Several years ago, when I first began writing for poetry journals, I kept a notebook with every rejection letter I received — I promise there were a lot. And every time I got a new rejection, I made my partner take me out to dinner. I showed my rejection letters to my friends and colleagues. Each failure was worth celebrating because it meant I was putting in the effort to get where I wanted to be. If I got a personalized rejection instead of a form letter, boy howdy, we went out for sushi or steak! The point is you don’t get where you want to be if you don’t try.

I’d like you to celebrate my field of weeds with me! This was the first time this ground has been broken for farming. Even with a gas cultivator, which turned the existing fescue into rich plant food, I wasn’t able to keep the weeds from outpacing the flax seeds. The birds ensured that I had a variety of wildflowers crop up, including some poppies. I gave up sometime around the time the weeds were waist-high and the flax was still 5” tall.

While it didn’t disrupt our growing season, we also discovered that our flood plain from our creek was wider than we’d originally anticipated and crossed through where our flax would have been… if we’d had any. Keep in mind, I’ve been growing flax for years and I’ve never failed so completely at it.

Meanwhile, my 5-year-old insisted that we plant a field of sunflowers and though I don’t have any flax to show for my efforts, he’s got an impressive variety of Kansas gold.

I will till the soil again in September and try planting a cover crop of oats and peas to get us through winter so we’re ready to try our hand at flax again in our second Spring!

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