Friday Notes: The Flower Fields
For the past several months, I’ve been ending each workweek by writing a short Friday note to my team. Sometimes they’re funny. Sometimes reflective. They’re usually sparked by something small that happened during the week and the unexpected lesson that followed. It occurred to me recently that they belong here too.
Today is the first day of spring, which always makes me happy, even if my track record with keeping plants alive says I shouldn’t be trusted with the season.
Last weekend my oldest daughter was visiting, and at one point we were standing by the window looking at my latest attempt at keeping something green alive (still pending outcome).
We started laughing and somehow ended up reminiscing about one of our favorite traditions: going to the Carlsbad Flower Fields.
Every year when the flowers were in full bloom, you’d drive up over the hill and suddenly it hit you. Rows and rows of color stretching toward the ocean. Like a rainbow had decided to settle in Southern California for a few weeks. That’s how we always knew we had arrived.
It became our signal that spring had officially begun. But what’s funny is, you don’t see any of that while it’s happening.
You don’t see the slow buildup.
The quiet growing.
The weeks where it probably just looks like dirt and rows and not much else.
And then one day…
It’s all there.
It made me think about how much of life feels like that. There are things taking shape that we haven’t fully seen yet.
Relationships deepening.
Confidence growing.
Understanding becoming a little clearer.
It’s not always visible in the moment, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. Some things just need time to come into full view. And when they finally do, you realize how much was growing all along.
Maybe that’s why I love spring so much. Not because everything suddenly blooms.
Because it reminds us that beautiful things spend a long time becoming beautiful before anyone notices.
