I’m a city girl. Had no idea what the stuff in the supermarket looked like originally (vacuum packed slices of ham.. no real connection to a live animal, and frozen vegetables.. no idea how they would look in nature and if grown on bushes or in the ground). Did go to a farm with school once and wrote a nice essay about it. But no idea or interest in the missing link.
Did have a phase with cacti (in my window sill) – because they could survive even if I didn’t look their way for weeks. And did like when our family one year got peas out of some square metres of garden patch.
A neighbour once asked me to look after her pot plants. Bad move. Over watered most of them and had no idea. Nearly as bad a move as when I became au pair after only having looked after one kid for one night. Amazing what people trust you with, just because you look kind of normal and sound sensible. A school girlfriend did give me a book with easy steps to follow to look after the most popular pot plants. Did manage to keep a succulent alive for some months. Once.
But here’s the amazing thing: I’ve come to treasure nature. I’ve managed to keep some plants alive for several years now (including resurrection). And I’ve started being interested in buying food that actually is as close to its natural state as possible.
Even if I still don’t have “green fingers”, I feel connected with nature and actually do have a talk to some trees and wild animals from time to time (sorry kids, I know you will be REALLY embarrassed by this confession). So even if I can’t do magic with nature’s crop yet, at least we spend some time together.
Happy gardening this week (or just sitting on a bench watching a flower!) – treasure your skills, however minimal.