The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
A Stupid Thing That People Say
This is a nice idea but it’s wrong.
“Now” is not the best time to plant a tree if “now” is in the middle of winter.
In 2015, I was recovering from a brain injury when my grandpa gave me the best productivity advice I have ever received:
Take your cues from nature.
The best time to plant a tree is in the spring, after the ground has thawed.
I confess that as much as my grandpa’s advice resonated with me, sometimes I forget it.
The Trap of Trying to Plant Trees in Winter
When everyone around you is planting trees, it seems like you should also be planting trees.
When the culture is telling you it’s time to plant trees, it’s easy to believe that this is what you should be doing.
I can drive myself crazy with setting intentions to “plant trees now. With diligence and persistence, I work hard to plant the trees. Sometimes too hard.
And when, for one reason or another, I don’t plant the trees, or the trees don’t take root, I can fall into a cycle of shame and blame.
I might wonder what’s wrong with me. Why do I seem to be the only one struggling to plant trees?
In those moments, I forget that the people around me might be in a different season.
Perhaps their ground has thawed. Perhaps they are in spring, but I am still in winter.
At some point, I am pulled out of my spiral of self-shaming and defeatism just enough to pick my head up and check in with my season.
Sometimes this happens retroactively: a shift in my season causes a realization that I’d been trying to plant a tree in frozen ground.
Of course it wasn’t working. I trying to plant in winter.
And then my grandpa’s advice comes back to me.
Take your cues from nature.
Nature is not just the season outside. It is also the season inside.
My seasons. My personal rhythms. My frozen ground.
It didn’t matter how hard I worked, how disciplined was, how committed to the process. No amount of willpower or discipline can override the laws of nature.
With nature, there are no shortcuts. There’s no end-run around the process.
You can’t plant a tree in frozen ground. Period. End of story.
This brings freedom from the shame and blame.
It wasn’t the right time.
How To Avoid Wasting Energy
At times, I’ve thought about how much energy I’ve wasted trying to plant a tree in frozen ground.
Wouldn’t it be great if I could know the season in advance? I would save so much effort on trying to hack through ice to plant seeds.
As it turns out, this is possible.
By learning the language of nature and the seasons — on both a micro level and a macro level — we can learn to read the signs of where we are in the cycle of seasons and rhythms.
We can avoid the futility of trying to plant a tree in winter.
And we can avoid the shame and blame game.
When you learn to speak the language of nature and it’s rhythms, the game changes.
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