My parents told me more than once that my lawn was a waste of water and that I should spend more time cultivating culinary herbs and other edibles in my garden. I wasn't interested. I had my vertical self-watering planters for my herbs, and my trees and flowers were taken care of by an agricultural engineer who is really good at what he does. I traveled a lot for work and my own pleasure. I barely spent time at home! I lived at high-speed, focusing on my career, and explorations. Mom repeatedly advised taking some moments to rest, and that getting my hands dirty with soil would be more therapeutic and cathartic than flying around the planet. I didn't want to believe her. In my mind, seeding, planting, weeding out, watering, and pruning were too much effort. And I didn't know much about being hands-on with plants. I tried having a blue orchid on my window sill but it didn't last more than 15 months 🙈

When the first lockdown took place, we were told that it required 2 weeks to flatten the curve. Weeks turned into months. And we resumed working from home when we couldn't reach the office. That meant I had some time on my hands. I didn't want to spend 20 hours a day working. And I struggled with sleeping more than 2-3 hours a night. So I asked my brother who is an agricultural engineer and owns a small shop to provide me with some seeds. Because I didn't want to damage the grass that I had worked so hard to grow and get to become an acceptable green space, because I wanted to walk barefoot and replenish my energy from the soil. Dad volunteered to get me some unused planters from my mother because we were requested to stay at home. He, as a priest, was able to drive around. It was a fun experiment to cultivate different types of tomatoes, some cucumbers, and a lot of basil in addition to the dill, green onions, celery, thyme, mint, parsley, arugula, purslane, and strawberries.

Some quotes about gardening:

The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies - Gertrude Jekyll

There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments - Janet Kilburn Philips

All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today - Chinese proverb

Gardening is a metaphor for life, teaching you to nourish new life and weed out which cannot succeed - Nelson Mandela

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered - Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you have a garden and library, you have everything you need - Cicero

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom - Anais Nin

And as the popular saying goes, from my own experience, I cannot but agree that "gardening is a medicine that does not require a prescription and has no limit on dosage"... (author unknown)