With so much time to spare, I discovered gardening as a new hobby that I started in mid-August. I do not have a vast tract of land to convert into a beautiful botanical park, but that is not a problem for me. I resorted to container gardening using the empty water gallons and cheap plastic pots I bought from the nearby hardware store. In embarking on my new “profession” as a gardener, the first thing I did was to purchase various seeds thru an online shop. For me, growing plants from seeds is a much more challenging and exciting way to start a garden than merely collecting and caring for fully grown plants. I ordered vegetable seeds, flower seeds, and herbs to find out what kind of plants I would be compatible with if there is such a thing as compatibility with plants. It took me one week or so for the seeds to be delivered to my doorstep. And, boy, I was so excited. I also ordered several seed trays where I could germinate the seeds. With the help of my neighbor, I bought bags of soil to fill the pots. I started out with ten seeds each of vegetables, flowers, and herbs. “Do I really have a green thumb?” was the question I was eagerly waiting for an answer.
The germination period was the most exciting phase of my gardening “career”. I would wake up earlier than usual every day to water the seeds and ensure that the seedling trays were getting enough sunshine all throughout the day. I would check the weather app on my cellphone to see whether there is rain coming so that I could cover the seedlings from the heavy downpour. After about two weeks of waiting, the seeds started to reach out their dainty hands out of the damp soil. It was a feeling of ecstasy seeing them struggling to break out from their tiny hard coating. In my excitement in watching them grow, I would be taking pictures of their growth and measuring their progress like a kid doing some first-time science experiments in grade school. (Remember the monggo beans experiment?)
As it turned out, I am most compatible with growing vegetable seeds based on the number of seedlings that sprouted, or maybe they are the least complicated seeds to grow. I was not successful with the herbs because those that germinated immediately withered. My batting average with flower seedlings is not impressive either since I was able to grow only one sunflower and four chrysanthemums. Fortunately, my romance with the vegetables promises a long-lasting relationship with four okra, seven eggplants, and seven tomatoes growing fast like my neighbor’s kids. Not bad, I told myself. With the rising price of vegetables nowadays, I just need to look at my container pots to decide on what dish to cook for a day.
Gardening is a great pastime. It is educational, too. I learned how to distinguish garden soil from loam soil and discover what plants grow best in what type of soil. Preparing organic fertilizer and natural insecticide from vegetable leftovers and fruit peels is one exciting task. Watching my vegetables grow day by day makes me realize that there is such an infinite power out there that nourishes the life of every creature on this planet. I had an epiphany that I am merely a caretaker of His creation, and He is the only source of the life-giving breath.
Each one of us is a gardener and given the plot to till — a garden we call the mind. What plants have you grown so far? If I were to visit your garden, what kind of vegetation would I see? From the moment we wake up in the morning, we are planting the seeds in our garden based on the quality and nature of thoughts that we nurture. In our lifetime, try to imagine watering those seeds until they take roots and grow and creep and fill every inch of our garden. Positive thoughts of love, joy, hope, and gratitude breed beautiful and colorful flowers, verdant shrubs, and even fruit-bearing trees of every kind. However, harboring negative thoughts, such as envy, anger, resentment, and greed, is like cultivating weeds and grass and other destructive vines that wreak havoc to our mind. These thoughts will soon become habits, and those habits will develop into our long-term attitude and outlook in life. In the end, the seeds we sowed that we allowed germinating in our minds shaped the quality of our present and future life.
According to the experts, mastering our mind is the only way to cultivate that garden and convert it into rich and fertile ground for our dreams to blossom. Neglecting our mind and feeding it with toxic thoughts is allowing our garden to be invaded by thorns and thistles that create destruction to our career and relationships. Don’t you think it is about time to uproot those pains and fears you have long been harboring your entire life? Or get rid of your frustrations and deep-seated anger towards those people who betrayed you? It is not yet too late to pull out those weeds of needless worries and seemingly endless stresses you allowed to dominate your waking and sleeping moments. They all drain us of our energy and power to create the ideal life that we deserve. To enjoy our life’s potentials to the fullest, we need to stand guard by the gate of our garden and never allow negativity to enter its premises.
A study carried out by cognitive neuroscientists suggested that an average person runs around 60,000 thoughts a day. And those thoughts do not end when we go to bed at night to sleep. They continue to overrun our dreams and sleeping moments. The most surprising finding of the study reveals that 98 percent of those thoughts are the same thoughts we repeatedly think about every day: the difficult people we have to deal with at work, the problems with the kids or spouse at home, the unpaid bills we have to settle before the due date comes, etc. And worse, 80 percent of those thoughts are negative thoughts and toxic mental wastes which we soon develop into bad habits. Those thoughts are the weeds that we are watering and nurturing every day. As a result, we become prisoners of our past and captives of our old negative habits. A weak mind can only perform limited actions. If we want to cultivate a robust, disciplined mental attitude, attending daily to our garden requires patience and persistence.
So, tell me. How’s your garden today?