On March 11th 2021, in a seedling pot made out of a toilet roll tube and Pritt Stick and sat on my bedroom windowsill, two tiny little onion sprouts pushed through the surface of the soil. It kind of changed my life.
ð§ : 11/03/21
As with many people, a year of Covid-19 related staying indoors took its toll on my mental health. I sometimes refer to myself as solar-powered, because when the sun hits my skin it really does feel like I'm regaining lifeforce, but lockdown was making me feel more disconnected than ever from the environment outside my flat.
I didn't realise that picking up some seeds from Sainsbury's on a whim and planting them in cardboard tubes would be the thing that gave me purpose as Spring came around, nor that it would offer me so many valuable life lessons along the way.
Here are 5 life lessons I learned from my beginner's journey into gardening.
Gardening cannot be rushed. The time it takes for a seed to grow is not up for negotiation, and you can't micro-measure your progress. The growth is only visible when you take a step back.
Because I tweet about Notion, my timeline is filled with tech and productivity lovers who are always striving to get more done, rush the next MVP and earn the next dollar. Memes about working on personal projects instead of resting on your days off get retweeted onto my feed daily. It's easy to fall into thinking that you always need to be doing more, faster, shipping before you're ready and sprinting forward. There is no shipping before you're ready with plants. Tending to seedlings as they grow has literally forced me to have patience, see the big picture and slow down.
ð§ : 18/03/21
A small bit of attention daily and nothing more is all that's needed, and it's given me permission to take the pressure off in other areas of my life. My mind is thanking me already.
ð§ ð ðŧ: 14/04/21
Having something small to focus on every day - checking seedlings for new growth, watering if needed - is a habit that helps to keep me present and wake my brain up in the morning. Though I'm not one for a religiously structured morning routine, the small duty of checking on my plants each morning is just enough to ground me at the start of the day.
My favourite feeling, however, is on my lunch break, when I climb (ungracefully) out the window to tend to my roof garden, with the sun on my face and my hands in compost, dirt making its way under my nails. There's a growing amount of anecdotal evidence that skin-to-earth contact can help us feel calm and connected, and when I'm repotting a houseplant with my hands in amongst roots and compost, it feels amazing.
I've always been a nurturing person - good with kids, wanted to be a mum when I grew up, worked as a childminder at uni, the caregiving one in the friend group, etc. But as a 26 year old child-free during a pandemic, there wasn't much for me to nurture (apart from my cat, obviously ðââŽ). Little did I know the affection I would gain instantly for the tiny plants on my windowsill. Even littler did I know the utter glee it would bring me when one grew a new leaf or a strong root or had a growth spurt.
Now time to get a little serious: I struggle with depression and low self-esteem, but every day that I wake up and see that my little garden hasn't suddenly died, it restores a little bit of faith that I'm not a failure of a human. I look after these plants! They are safe with me. I'll take that small dose of self-assurance any day.
ðŧ: 22/04/21
https://tenor.com/view/controlling-type-a-melissa-fumero-detective-amy-santiago-brooklyn99-gif-13269887
ðŠīðââŽðŧ: 23/04/21
I'm not gonna lie, this one doesn't come easy to me, but it's non-negotiable with this hobby. Plants work on nature's schedule, not yours. It's an important reminder that - against all my conditioning - I don't have to micro-manage everything in my life or at work.
I felt this the most when I finally gave my pots a permanent home on my rooftop after moving them back and forth from the dresser to the windowsill daily for a couple of weeks. Putting my baby plants outside for real meant ****I couldn't control the temperature, the sun exposure, or whether the local squirrels would try to bury seeds in their pots, disturbing the soil (spoiler: they would). But in order for the plants to continue growing, I had to let go.
And hey, the plants are fine. Maybe if I loosen up my grip just a little, other parts of my life will be too.
Perhaps this is the most important lesson of all.
Tending to my first-steps garden of 5 onions, 14 tomatoes, 3 sunflowers, 1 strawberry and a nasturtium has helped me feel more connected to our planet and its delicately balanced ecosystems than ever before. As we, as humans, ask so much from the earth, it's only right that we protect, and regenerate it in return.
My rooftop sprouts won't single-handedly reverse climate change, and it's not solely up to individuals to do that either, but it has cultivated (pun not intended) in me a sense of awe and appreciation for nature that has spurred me to learn more about regenerative practices, permaculture and living in partnership with our planet.
ð§ ð ðŧððš: 28/04/21
I have been spending so much leisure time recently consuming media about slow, mindful and regenerative living. I've curated some of my favourite starting points below: