Repotting Myself
Since I don't have a green thumb, when it came time to repot some of
our house plants, I asked my friend Joy, who I think has green hands,
to help me. We went to the neighborhood plant store and got some
potting soil and some stones to put on the bottom of the pot for
drainage, and then we picked out some pots.
"Don't get too-big pots," she advised. "You just want to step
up to the next size." She later explained that if I put the plant in
much bigger pots, they will spend all their energy growing roots to
fill out the pots instead of creating new leaves and flowers. That
makes sense to me.
For the New Morning show on "
A New Beginning," Diana Holman and Ginger Pape were in the studio talking about their book
Repotting,
using the gardening term as a metaphor for life. As Timberly struggled
to get an African violet out of its pot, I identified with the plant.
It's hard to be pulled out of your nice cozy pot that you have
grown into, filling every little corner of it with a piece of you. I
look around my home and city, reflect upon my family and friends, and I
can see that my roots have grown deep and broad.
Do I need a little more room in order to grow? Have I depleted
the nourishment in my current situation; do I need to find some
fertilizer to help me grow? What would that be? Study, silence, a vacation?
Am I stuck, root-bound, doing the same old same old things day after day?
All good questions, which could be asked daily. Certainly,
these are good things to ask myself as the seasons change, and plants
indoors and out throw out evidence of real growth.
Still, I'm strangely comforted by that image of a plant being
set in a pot just a bit larger than the one it's been in. That way,
roots, leaves, and flowers can all grow.
So I'm going to tweak the metaphor. Repotting is good for us,
but for mind (flowers), body (leaves) and soul (roots) to have a chance
to grow holistically, it may be best to take it one step at a time.