{"id":7569,"date":"2016-06-16T05:30:45","date_gmt":"2016-06-16T00:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=7569"},"modified":"2016-06-16T05:30:45","modified_gmt":"2016-06-16T00:00:45","slug":"from-hoarder-to-nurturer-how-gardening-helped-me-grow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=7569","title":{"rendered":"From Hoarder to Nurturer, How Gardening helped Me Grow"},"content":{"rendered":"\nI<\/span>wasn\u2019t born with a green thumb. I have killed more plants than Weiss and Benioff have killed the beloved Starks in \u2018Game of Thrones\u2019. I have been infamously called the Ted Bundy of horticulture. My long list of victims includes a bamboo bonsai, a cactus, and a succulent whose name I didn\u2019t bother to find out. I didn\u2019t murder them intentionally, of course. As a single, independent women living in a new city in her early twenties, I was too busy finding a boyfriend, nursing hangovers and stalking Brad Pitt online. I just happened to do what I saw a lot of people doing.\n\nAfter the death toll rose to a double-digit number, I stopped buying plants and accepted my leaf-less existence the way one accepts one\u2019s flat feet or freckles\u2014without paying it any further attention whatsoever. Back then, I promptly skipped the Insta stories featuring garden herbs that my digital acquaintances were working on. When a friend told me excitedly that she had bought plants but no furniture for the flat she was to move in the next week, I rolled my eyes. Each time I read bios that had the words \u2018plant papa\u2019 in it, my brain cells shook in horror.\n\n

I have been infamously called the Ted Bundy of horticulture. My long list of victims includes a bamboo bonsai, a cactus, and a succulent whose name I didn\u2019t bother to find out.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nI was convinced gardening is dumb, and boring\u2014a hobby for people with no social life, so to speak. \u00a0It\u2019s 2022. I\u2019m no longer single, in my twenties or a Brad Pitt stalker. I see my three friends once in three months. I don\u2019t bar-hop, I get high on Ikea promotions. I also have a humble balcony garden. Undead. Thriving rather. Sometimes I sit and try to think how this transformation has come about. How did I go from plant-hopping to caring, nurturing them like my own?\n\nIt all began with an aloe-vera sapling that my mother-in-law pulled out of her well-pruned garden after hearing me complain about the useless anti-acne serums I had burned a sizeable chunk of my monthly salary on. Given my horrific past, my first reaction was to come clean and confess my crimes. I wanted to warn her that aloe\u2019s blood would be on her hands. Not mine.\n\nI remained quiet. The promise of acne-free skin was too tempting to pass. Selfish motive still, you could say.\n\n

Like maybe anti-ageing creams, long-massages, and the cumbersome act of saving old receipts, gardening, is one of those things that make sense only as you grow older.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nShockingly, Al grew tall despite all odds. It survived the menacing sun with little to no water week after week. It survived in a less than ideal home (a ceramic pot without drainage holes\u2014my first rookie mistake), it survived the haunting gaze of Mowgli, my cat. Al was resilient and this resilience quite possibly began to rub off on me. Impressed by my plant\u2019s tremendous fortitude, I brought home a modest four-inch basil. Then marigold. Followed by jade and mint. After a few failed attempts, I learned to propagate herbs with stem cuttings. Meanwhile, My Google search history indicated all signs of me turning into a crazy plant lady. I began sneaking out to nurseries on the pretext of picking up groceries. I spent a significant amount of my waking hours listening to random strangers on the Internet explain the difference between potting soil and potting mix. I had finally found something to give myself to, without the caveat of risking my health or emptying my pockets.\n\nLike maybe anti-ageing creams, long-massages, and the cumbersome act of saving old receipts, gardening, is one of those things that make sense only as you grow older. It\u2019s an experience situated outside the body and yet its therapeutic, humbling effects are almost all internal. There is the slowing down of heart rate as you mindfully water your greens, there is the dopamine released when you sight a butterfly humming around your desert rose. There is the quiet buzz of inhaling scented jasmine that doesn\u2019t come out of a glass bottle. These are basic things really, but in the middle of hectic, systematised lives they have begun to represent for me an oasis of organic calmness. A relationship that only delivers more than it demands.\n\n

It\u2019s clich\u00e9d, of course, but with nurturing little saplings of your own, it\u2019s the journey. A journey that saved me in times of mental exhaustion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nLike all forms of therapy though, gardening takes time to grow on you. It\u2019s not going to satisfy you like maybe the click of an app. Fancy Bonsais and plants look good in the background of your workplace, but in the real world they have to be nurtured, cared for. It\u2019s this process that grounds you, maybe instils in you the patience that none of us have today. You can\u2019t will a seed into germinating quickly. You can\u2019t add a sapling to the cart and expect it to arrive at your doorstep in twenty minutes, fully bloomed. It\u2019s clich\u00e9d, of course, but with nurturing little saplings of your own, it\u2019s the journey. A journey that saved me in times of mental exhaustion.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I used to be the fancy plant hoarder without ever really caring after them but it wasn\u2019t until I started to nurture some less exotic saplings, did I feel the therapeutic effects of gardening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":464,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[11813,62,11814,3671,11815,4932],"class_list":["post-7569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pov","tag-aloe","tag-arre","tag-gardening","tag-nature","tag-plants","tag-pov"],"yoast_head":"\nFrom Hoarder to Nurturer, How Gardening helped Me Grow<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I used to be the fancy plant hoarder without ever really caring after them but it wasn\u2019t until I started to nurture some less exotic saplings, did I feel the therapeutic effects of gardening.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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