To love a plant is to love parts of yourself that you tend to forget about.
The act of growing something from dirt, to tend to it and nourish it, to give it life, to see it bloom, to see it thrive...these are pleasures that are not for those without patience.
I have been curious for the longest time about why gardening, and the simple joys of growing a patch of earth into a blooming spectacle has been associated with older people, people who have retired, or are close to it, as a leisure afforded only to those who apparently have no pressing matters of the worldly world.
It is as if societies are built in a way that tells us that to grow something outside of yourself, you must first, have grown yourself. There is, perhaps, some merit in that thought.
The internet is replete with articles telling us about how beneficial gardening is, as a hobby for the older generation. Calling it the ‘perfect pastime,’ an engagement to fill your otherwise aloneness.
Something that empowers you.
But I wonder whether the internet of ‘things’ forgets sometimes that the universe is not always about thingness.
To tend to a garden requires more than just time.
It needs a soul that is more connected to nature than one can easily perceive, a mind sharp and focused, a body that does not shy away from arduous work, sweating in the sun.
I knew a woman once, who at 62 had woken up with military discipline for more than two decades because she wanted to tend to her plants before the day caught on to her. She grew sunflowers and cosmos, petunias, and calendula and had birds nesting in the long trees that lined her home.
I know a woman now, not yet in her thirties yet, who works 12 hours a day, surrounding herself with plants in her workspace and home, poring obsessively (almost) over knowledge and ways to keep them alive and help them thrive as she blazes through days that demand more of her than can possibly be healthy.
And my colleague in office received a Christmas Cactus from her Secret Santa, (she assures me it is a coincidence), and claims that it is the first thing she has kept alive for this long. This is February, she is 24.
Something about the pride in their voice as they speak of the plants that they grow, speaks to the desire to give care. It is often perceived as a luxury, to grow plants, to raise a garden...but it is a deep, deep human desire to remain relevant in a world bent on changing the rhythms of earth.
Plants reward you like nobody and nothing else.
If you neglect them, they will tell you. If you ignore them, forget them, leave them be, they will have nothing more to say to you. But if you love them right, they will bring you the joy that is as rare as it is fulfilling.
And so, I could have spoken (like many others) of the great benefits of growing a garden of your own. They will let you know that it will stimulate your mind and save you from dementia in your advancing years, it will keep your motor skills in order, give you renewed purpose, boost your mood, and strengthen your bone.
I choose not to give you benefits in bullet-points.
Nature is not neat, with lush grass comes weed, with flowers come thorns, it is not all pretty, but it is awe-inspiring, and it is beautiful.
Women, as they grow older, develop a deep-rooted sense of how to see beauty in all things taking to life on earth and that I believe is the only reason many of them take to grow things that carry life. And aging, I believe happens, often times independent of your body.
An- aged mind is a wise mind.
I am choosing the path you chose when you took up the shovel and dug that earth. I am choosing to rebel, just as you did when they told you, you were too old or too young for it, too hasty or too laidback, too capable, or too incompatible with the idea of giving love to the earth and seeing it flourish.
Because to love a plant is to love parts of yourself that you must remember.
And so, I must invite you now to share your own stories of how you fell in love with your first plant!
Tell us, do you have an unexpected love story too?