Finding growth in failure – LeAnna Theresa Photography

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Hello! Thank you for stopping by!

Fall is just around the corner and this weekends weddings at the Stateroom and the Gables felt like full summer!  I love documenting weddings for a living but Fall weddings are always my favorite and I am excited for what the rest of my 2017 season has to bring!

A few months back I teamed up with Shore Perfect Farms in Barnegat to rent space to grow a sunflower field to use for my photo sessions.  I did the research, endless hours of it in fact. We spread the soil, about 25 tons in just one weekend. I ordered a wide range of seeds, the best I could find on the web.  We installed sprinklers and experimented with watering more and less over 90 days. I planted three times the amount of wildflowers suggested.

And what happened?

Not much.

There was definitely some blooms and growth but not nearly the 1500+ seeds I planted.

At first I was slightly embarrassed.  I spoke to soon,  I advertised something I can’t deliver.  I then moved to frustration.  Dylan and I put a lot of work into the field and it yielded little results.  I then realized this is a learning experience and it’s something I can grow from, pun definitely intended.

I realized it was something we genuinely enjoyed doing.  I seriously loved my time at the farm.  I would feed the horses and bring Tucker almost daily. Duane and I had many chats while hanging out with goats. It was quiet.  It was beautiful.  It was peaceful.  It was not a failure.

It didn’t yield the results I wanted, but it made me want to learn more and want to do better next year. I genuinely feel I was as prepared as I possibly could have been. But there is a lesson in this and I look forward to learning the what and why of it all and learning to grow, pun definitely intended again.

Here is a photo of Dylan and I from a few years ago, not in my sunflower field lol!

Sep 17, 2017

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