Dr. Dixie Dillon Lane (Hearth & Field print, no link that I could find):
We must learn to live with unsettledness, with things stuck for a while in the uncomfortably incomplete middle. This is hard for the productivity-minded person; turning, during such passages, toward other forms of fruitfulness helps. But don’t take it too far: we must also learn to slow ourselves and be at peace in seasons of fallowness and rest.
[…]
When we plant marigolds or impatiens or other annuals, we expect a brief flush of color, but we know it is just for a season. An investment of time elaborately adorning our lives with carnations, columbines, tulips, torch lilies, hydrangeas, and hellebores, on the other hand, carries the hope that their beauty and fragrance will always be with us. But nothing born of this Earth is truly perennial…. At the same time, though, so long as we are here and so long as the seasons keep spinning around us, it is ours to rise and try again.