Every mother’s day for the last 5 years I have planted 3-5 tomato plants anticipating the summer growing season.  It is a dream fulfilled and continuing that I have the ability to grow some of my own food and live on a budding homestead in Northern California.  Some years I stop at a local nursery the week before to buy seedlings and other years after the obligatory Mother’s Day brunch or rowdy kid filled stop at Starbucks to get my mom-latte, I stop to pick some up.

This year, nothing.  Too busy.  I hadn’t made the time and ahem, no one else thought to buy them for me.  No brunch or mom-latte either as hubby and 2 of my 3 littles had the flu.  A super fun time if you can’t already read between the lines.

I was feeling a bit miffed and disappointed.  A year without growing tomatoes I guessed as I will be again busy in the following weeks traveling with my new book Fierce Kindness: Be a Positive Force for Change.  I took some big breaths, had myself a little shake it off dance break and then a good loud “oh well” to shift my outlook.

Resigned to my tomato-less fate and contented anyway, I went to poke around the garden boxes which were in deep need of weeding after the wet winter, as at least I could seed some arugula.

Absorbed in my weeding I moved to one of the side boxes and gasped as I grabbed on to a healthy tomato plant!  I couldn’t believe it and even more amazing she had sisters dancing all around her in the neighboring two boxes- 50 some plants in all.

O to the M to the G it hit me like a spiritual ton of bricks.  Plant the seeds, trust the process.  I laughed out loud and opened my arms to thank the sky (true story).  Consistent sowing of seeds and letting go of the outcome (in yogic philosophy a form of abhyasa & vairagya) has created huge abundance.  The seeds, the daily choices and actions create a powerful growth, a ripple effect that multiples out.  It may look different than you planned, yet trusting that love/universe/god/source is in your corner and that your consistent choices based in love and growth will create abundance beyond your wildest dreams.  Life will affirm back to you your deepest beliefs.  Connect with your core-self love beliefs and observe the signs as affirmations you are on the right track.   Keep going, sow the seeds and my tomato plants are telling you to trust the process.

Melanie Salvatore-August is an author of Fierce Kindness; Be a Positive Force for Change and Kitchen Yoga; Simple Home Practices to Transform Mind, Body and Life, a yoga teacher mentor, a mother of three wonderful boys and lives in the SF bay area and virtually at melaniesalvatoreaugust.com