How To Keep Your Plants Alive And Thriving
Gardening is a great metaphor for our lives. That's probably why I secretly love it.
You can't grow and maintain a healthy garden overnight. Whether it's one plant, or one thousand plants, it takes consistent love, care, and attention for things to thrive.
Take my Night-blooming Jasmines, for example. On three different occasions (once in New England, and twice in Texas), I've successfully raised three baby Jasmine plants to thriving adults. I didn't do this because I'm special or have a green thumb, but simply because I care, and I channel that care through consistent action.
Does saying good morning to my plants every single day help? I'd like to think it does. But not because of some mystical reasons. Not because "God's watching." But rather, by taking the time to flip open the shades and acknowledge their existence every day, I'm also observing their current state. I'm seeing if they need more water, less water, more sun, less sun. I'm simply taking care of them. Every, single day.
Is it magic? Or is it something else, something much simpler?
You can inherit a bountiful garden overnight, just like you can inherit ten million dollars overnight. But what about maintaining it? What about keeping it alive? What about growing it?
Knowing how to take care of something is much different than simply having it. That's why most lottery winners blow their money and end up poorer, and more unhappy than before they won. They neglect what's important.
So what is important, then?
Keeping your plants alive and healthy is a lot like keeping your relationship alive and healthy.
Sure there's luck. Sure there's factors out of our control. But at the end of the day, all that really matters is consistent love, effort, and a willingness to get through difficult times together.
I'm celebrating my two year anniversary with my amazing girlfriend, and looking back, we've had our fair share of difficult times. But we've both come to realize that those difficulties are not obstacles, but rather opportunities for our growth, opportunities to work through challenges together, only to come out stronger on the other side.
Challenges are like weights for our relationship. They hurt in the moment, but if we move through them with intention, we can only come out stronger.
Storms might come in and wipe out half of our garden. But neither we, nor our garden, are defined by a single storm that passes through.
Instead, we're defined by the hours we spend every single day, tending to the garden, mending broken plants, nursing weak ones back to health, and making sure the strong ones maintain their strength.
There's no one event that says it all, but rather many tiny events, spread across time.
So what's the secret to keeping plants alive and healthy?
Some might say science. Some might say a green thumb. But I've found it's none of that. It's simply daily care, attention, and constant learning. If we translate that to life, it's love, consistency, and a willingness to keep improving.
There's really no magi