Zen and the Art of Leaving Your Plants the Fuck Alone.
🧘Take a moment and sit or stand up straight. Take a deep breath in………… and release. It’s safe to assume that at least some of the oxygen you took in was created by plants.* 🌿
Plants provide many benefits to humans. They provide food, clothing, and shelter. They produce oxygen and clean the air. We make pharmaceutical and recreational drugs from them. When we bring them indoors, they boost our mental health and speed up recovery. (🙄I am skeptical of the real-world applications of such claims but let’s move on)
It’s amazing what plants can do. It’s almost like there is at least one, if not dozens, of plants for nearly all needs humans have thought up.
And yet, many miss out on the deepest benefits plants can provide.
The fact that owning a large plant collection comes with its own unique set of rewards is obvious. But it also comes with a host of frustrations as well. It often means soil spills and water on the floor. Infestations of leaf-munching bugs. That Ficus benjamina that sheds leaves just small enough to ignore but that still gather in slowly growing piles. The constant rearranging of shelves and plant positions. Dealing with stinking rotting plants that we killed yet again by our overbearing need to care for something.
It’s enough to send any would-be plant parent running for the hills 🏃 leaving a trail of dying plants in their wake. Too much work to bear. And for those of us deep in the throws of our plant-hoarding feast, these frustrations are simply a way of life.
But as someone once said ‘Life is suffering’. We might as well choose the suffering we enjoy. When faced with what seems to be a frustrating plant chore ahead of me I find it helpful to take a moment to breathe.
I remind myself ‘I chose this’. Whatever the task may be I am not required to do it. Life will not be better or worse if I undertake this project. It also won’t be better or worse if I do nothing at all.
I chose to bring plants into my home, and thus, chose the chore in front of me. Because this is a choice I can choose to do it, and thus I can choose not to do it. Any frustration I feel is the frustration I chose.
But there was often a reason I wanted to do the chore; be it pruning, repotting, cleaning, sifting compost, top dressing, gathering rainwater, integrated pest management, watering, etc. But the slower I am to act. The more I breathe and observe the quicker my desires fade away and often my frustrations along with them.
There used to be a desire to have an impressive collection, to have my plants say something about myself. I suppose sometimes there still is. The desire to appear knowledgeable and competent still arises in moments of vanity. But more often these days the reason behind the desire to participate in plant work is less about myself.
Rather, houseplants and the chores that come with them are the perfect excuses to slow down. Plant work is a neverending reminder (at least for me) to drop into the present moment. This is chosen work and one that benefits other living creatures.
I don’t think plants are particularly special. They are just special to me. Perhaps if I was as fascinated by the inner workings of my computer as I am by the relationship between all living things then this might be Zen and the Art of Computer Maintenance. 🤓🏍️📖
But truth be told, while no more special than any other interest, Plants carry a unique property in that they are, to the rational mind, easily identifiable as being alive and thus we can nurture them and ourselves in the process. However, unlike animals and people, the stakes are much lower if mistakes are made.
I could write a whole book on the subject, (shameless plug: You can get my first book, “Leave it the Fuck Alone” HERE or on amazon.com ) and in fact that might just be my next book.
So, what does this have to do with leaving our plants the fuck alone? Quite a lot. Probably too much to go over in this blog alone. But we will get there, slowly, one breath at a time. But for now, it’s worth just beginning to think about plant care as more than a method of self-care and self-interest.
The daily/weekly tasks are the doorways to mindfulness. A world within a world. Our hidden path to the present moment.
Want to learn more about the practical methods of plant observation check out my new book
“Leave it the Fuck Alone”
*It is estimated that roughly 70% of the earths atmospheric oxygen is produced by phytoplankton. While still using the photosynthetic process, they are not technically plants.