Even with all the ugly stuff that’s happened in my garden this summer (hello squirrels and bunnies), I still got a bouquet like this.

I still have a wild grape vine climbing high to make a beautiful trellis. I still have sunflowers daring to bloom in the midst of destruction. I still pick ripe tomatoes from my bare, eaten-up tomato plant. I still have rose bushes that bloom and some that tenaciously keep growing to get established despite repeated setbacks. Still. What a complicated word.

“I’m still here. . .”

“I’m still walking through this. . .”

“I’m still afraid. . .”

But also!

“I’m still growing here.”

“I’m still healing in the midst of this.”

“I’m still braver than I was yesterday.”

This 2020 slapped-together garden born from quarantine is all sorts of messy, but it holds the complicated concept of Still. Which is all of us. Go ahead and take Monday by the horns.

Because you can.