My mom has a green thumb — a huge one. Something of a black thumb myself, I’ve always admired her ability to turn an empty, desolate outdoor space into a blooming oasis, all in the matter of a few months. As long as I can remember, my mother has maintained a yearly vegetable garden, full of all kinds of foods. We spent our summer months supping on the bounty of my mom’s garden-fresh grilled or fried squash, juicy tomatoes, brightly-toned red and green peppers — what delight! Looking back upon my earliest years, I clearly recall my mother spending her afternoons outdoors, tending and watering (and sometimes admiring) her handiwork.

A few years ago, I decided to have my own turn at tending a garden. I spent three or four hours, and quite a pretty penny, picking out some beautiful, freshly bloomed flowers to plant in a bed of mulch in my front yard. After carefully tucking the roots just below the soil, sprinkling in some fertilizer and watering the little pups for the first time, the immediate result was stunning. The entire front yard was full of color and I felt proud. However, only a few days later, my beautiful plants began to wilt in the scorching sun. I watered them again, adding more fertilizer and hoping for the best. Within three weeks, the flowers were all but dead, and the two beds in which I had planted them were crawling with weeds. My attempts to plant a successful garden had failed miserably, and I was incredibly disheartened.

Looking back at my fruitless gardening exploits, any successful gardener could quickly name a few things I had forgotten in the gardening process. Notably, I have recently come to realize that the stage of my mother’s gardening efforts that I had been the quickest to forget was the tilling season. Often overshadowed by the succor of its results, this was a time essential for the preparation of a successful family garden. This was a season for churning up old soil full of roots, weeds, and rubbish. I remember the rotor tilling machine my parents used to rent year after year, which they spent tiresome hours in the blistering sun running back and forth through the plot intended for the garden. The rotor tiller stirred things in the soil, digging deep beneath the weeds and unearthing them from their underground hiding spots. It also mixed the soil used in the previous year’s growing season with soil that had been resting beneath it, sheltered from the sun and still filled with nutrients. Over time I have come to learn that the tilling season, in whatever form one might find it, is thus essential for a successful crop.

There are, in fact, tilling seasons of many kinds found not only in gardens but in all spheres of life. As I’ve discovered well enough through my own trial and error, establishing solid roots and bearing good fruit is not something that just happens naturally. We cannot simply throw down some dirt, buy a few plants, and expect a thriving garden. However, if we are willing to put in the initial effort involved in laying a solid foundation, we may yet see crops that bloom twofold, fivefold, and a hundredfold.

This fall, a time of tilling in my own life will shift to a time of sowing. I am moving southward, to pursue a new opportunity in design. The period leading up to this opportunity has been full of lots of churning and upheaval, of longing to be planted but finding no root, and of waiting for seeds to establish themselves in the soil and begin to bear fruit. That is, perhaps, a journey that resonates with many a twenty-something.

We twenty- and young thirty-somethings want to be planted deep, yet often feel like such a thing lies just beyond our grasp, as we are in the years of exploring the initial contours of who we are to become and learning to listen for where and with whom we make sense. Many of our peers are as well, and there is constant moving and shifting in the soil of our lives, perhaps physical and sometimes social or emotional. There is, to be sure, almost nothing harder than seeing a glimpse of what is to come yet not being able to bloom until just the right time. Yet, as the story of my mom’s garden has taught me, the best crops come from a soil that has been prepared, tilled and watered for the coming growth cycle. We long for our gardens to grow, big and tall, and for them to provide sustenance for many, but a time of tilling is always necessary before the season of the crops.