DB Author Regina Andrews guest blogs - "The Seeds of Inspiration"

“The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.” Henry David Thoreau

I don’t know about you, but there’s something about this time of year that motivates me to get back to my connection with the Earth. The first sunny day, and my sleeves are rolled up. Time to cultivate my own garden, as Voltaire put it.

Out I run to the Garden Shoppe to find the seeds of new life. Home I run to my window box, ready to plant my wildflower mixture and my forget-me-knots.



I prep the box. I dig and clear and drain and trowel, then sprinkle the seeds into their new environment. As I’m patting them in, I can’t help but imagine what the window box will look like before long. It’s filled with rich, wet dirt now, but it won’t stay this way. Soon it will be loaded in a riot of green sprouts, then buds, and then colored with a sea of fresh flowers.

Just like the seeds newly planted this spring, the ideas of this writer’s imagination will be given a loving start. Each day, I will tend them carefully, respectfully, joyously, coaxing them to develop into the most beautiful story possible.




Not all of them will make it. Just like the window box flowers, some ideas will be eclipsed by other factors: shadows, weak roots, or too much water. Some flowers, some stories are not meant to be. Yet, as Thoreau pointed out, each seed has a purpose and helps me along the way to creating a garden, or a story.

What a blessing as a writer to have that feeling of newness and potential every time I start a new project. And blessing upon blessing, this potential, this new start carries through all year long.

This time of year we in New England go from barren to beautiful, in about two weeks. Life is abuzz all around us. Everything is stirring. Bees are buzzing and lawn mowers are mowing. Ideas are taking root. Stories are sprouting. Inspiration is celebrated everywhere!

I wonder: what are your seeds of inspiration this spring?