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"Dumb people run, smart people wait, wise people go to the garden": Quote from Bengali philosopher Rabindranath Tagore.
Image: IMAGO/Cavan Images
It's currently thriving in the blue News columnist's pots. And as the seedlings grow, so does her hope that the world isn't all bad after all.
"Wow, lueg, a cucumber!" my family recently heard me shout. In fact, not just one, but many thumb-sized cucumbers are growing right now, which I planted together with my children.
Next to them grows fennel, which we have already harvested, beans, watermelons, coriander, peppermint, rosemary and a colorful mixture of flowers.
There are several offshoots of my rubber tree and soon there will be one or more plants in every room.
Even a monstera that we bought years ago - it looked so worn out at the time that we took it with us out of pity - is now thriving wonderfully in our living room after lots of coaxing, fertilizer and light.
The monstera is now so big that I need a hand truck if I ever want to move it. On the windowsill in the kitchen is a collection of cacti, one of which recently flowered for the first time. What an event.
Bild: Privat
Michelle de Oliveira is a journalist, yogini, mother and always in search of balance - and not just on the yoga mat. She also has a soft spot for all things spiritual. In her column, she reports on her experiences with the incomprehensible, but also from her very real life with all its joys and challenges. She lives with her family in Portugal.
Although my Portuguese relatives regularly provide me with lemons from their gardens, I wish I had my own lemon tree.
I imagine it would be incredibly romantic to pick a dewy lemon from my tree early in the morning, squeeze it and drink the juice.
I have set myself the goal of growing the lemon tree from scratch - even if it takes up to seven years for a tree to bear fruit for the first time - if at all. Anyway.
So I washed lemon seeds from a donated lemon, wrapped them in damp kitchen paper and put them in a plastic bag, which I placed in the sun. The first two attempts failed, I got nothing but mold.
The third time it worked and two seeds germinated. I planted them and sure enough, two little lemon trees are now growing very delicately. I am delighted and proud of my green - well, light green - thumb.
For my 40th birthday, my family gave me an olive tree. My joy couldn't have been greater. I could spend hours looking at my plants, plucking something here and there, repotting something every now and then.
I take photos from every possible angle, all I need to do is post them on my WhatsApp status. Maybe, yes maybe, this blossoming love of gardening is a kind of midlife crisis.
So what if it is?
It could be a lot worse than repotting plants with a hunched back and ending up with crumbs of soil everywhere.
I think there is something deeply calming about gardening, especially in these turbulent times - and yes, something grounding. When the tender leaves poke through the soil, I allow myself to hope that the world isn't all bad after all.
Of course, this is naive and of course, with my mini watermelons, tiny cucumbers, fennel and handful of beans, I am far from being self-sufficient.
If things get dicey, the ten pots in front of the house won't help us, and they certainly won't change the current world situation. Nevertheless, they do me good.
I recently came across a quote from the Bengali philosopher and artist Rabindranath Tagore: "Stupid people run, clever people wait, wise people go to the garden."
That's what I say.
Although I don't have a garden, just pots around the house. But I dream of a garden where I can lose myself, bury my hands deep in the ground and come out with dirty fingernails and happy.
Or perhaps looking after my seedlings as elegantly as Pamela Anderson does in her garden. She writes in a post on Instagram:
'I think of life as a garden... You get to replant, start again, and make it yours. In German: "I think of life as a garden... You can replant it, start again, and make it yours."
And who knows, maybe the dream of having my own garden will come true by the time the first lemons hang from my tree. Hope grows with you.
