[Galin]

While you're reading I'll add: the timing in the essay is a bit unclear imy opinion, unless you or somone can clarify it better. Galadriel is in Greenwood, and this possibly goes hand in hand with the first edition passage that Celeborn, in the Second Age, established a realm in the South of Greenwood [later revised].

The 'conception' is thus the interpretation that we have Olorin here, not Gandalf as an Istar, and this would be well before the collective choosing of the Istari and so on. And Olorin gives the Elessar stone with mention of Yavanna. I don't recall any indication here [necessarily] of an Istari-related mission...

... but what we do have is what I and others have wondered about already: a Galadriel who desires flowers and grass that do not die, and, considering that she has one of the Three Great Rings of preservation power when the Istari appear, this does not easily fall in line with a time after the Istari arrived in Middle-earth.

In other words the conception is not explicitly noted by Tolkien, but for me it does not seem awkward, especially given my quote from JRRT about Olorin visiting folk in Middle-earth [outside of and before the Istari mission]...

... and no more awkward than Melian coming to Middle-earth in a physical form, for example. And if one objects to Tolkien's conception from WPP about the Valar and Maiar visting Middle-earth, we could even 'invent' a ship for Olorin in this period.