It's My Birthday and I'll Post About Plants If I Want To
on growing up and growing beings
I am 32 today! You know what that means, sluggies!
Not to be morbid but I was so depressed in my 20’s that I really didn’t expect to live this long, and now that I made it here I gotta figure out what to do?? Thankfully, I have entered into the era of my next Great Obsession: PLANTS.
This morning I awoke to a beautiful gift — the tiny, tiny seed leaves of a rosemary plant sprouting. I had been thinking about just buying a starter rosemary, because I was reading that they can actually be really difficult to germinate, but these baby leaves have me feeling confident I can do this.
By this, I mean garden. I must confess that I have never been able to keep a plant alive. I thought this was just part of my personality — I’m not a nurturer, I am chronically forgetful, and my nickname growing up was Messy. I just thought growing plants wasn’t part of my skillset, and I’d resigned myself to a garden-less life.
But I’m realizing now that gardening requires a full-scale adjustment of our sense of time. Growing plants is slow work, and it makes you think in months and seasons, not days. It is a cyclical process, especially when you have winter to consider.
I grew up in Florida, so seasons were never a part of my life. It was just always hot and usually raining, and the only thing I had to plan for in winter was an influx of elderly snowbirds causing traffic jams.
I hated winter for years and resisted it entirely, but seeing all the plants come back in spring has changed my feelings. You don’t appreciate flowers when they’re always blooming — winter is a darkness that makes the sun that much brighter.
Zone 10 gardeners in Florida may be able to grow year-round, but they never get the rest that winter provides. It’s a forced break, a reset, and I’ve come to appreciate it here in Zone 7.
I used to think gardening was too slow and tedious for someone who needs the stimulation of multitasking (I’m a hunter in a world of farmers!!), but I’m realizing that multitasking is actually a requirement in the garden when winter looms.
We get two growing seasons here — spring and fall — and you have to grow a lot of plants at once to maximize your time in the sun. For someone who needs to spin a bunch of plates in the air to get anything done, having little ongoing projects in the form of slow-growing plants is perfect.
My newfound desire for slowness has made gardening more amenable for me, but my relationship to plants has also changed. I never say “it” anymore when I talk about them, because I see them as my fellow beings now — kin, as Robin Wall Kimmerer writes:
…we can now refer to birds and trees not as things, but as our earthly relatives. On a crisp October morning we can look up at the geese and say, “Look, kin are flying south for the winter. Come back soon.”
Seeing plants as my kin means I want to go outside and check up on them everyday. This pulls me out of the house and keeps me mindful of small joys — something that naturalists refer to as the art of noticing. I check my plant friends daily, and I notice new leaves, emerging buds, and bites taken out by hungry slugs.
It keeps me here, with my hands in the dirt. I still love chaos, questions, and 10,000 open tabs, but this airy Gemini has gotten tired of always floating. I find myself reaching toward the ground, longing to plant my feet in the earth, where I want to be as I get older, as the world spins faster away from me.
we have the same birthday. wish you all the best!!
happy birthday from another nother gemini! love love reading about your garden updates & slow adventures