Image: Barbara Ryther
Repotting
An hour spent at the plant nursery is a better hour than most! So many plants, each one an old friend or a new possibility.
The first thing I grow in a new garden is questions….Where will the sun shine? Where will the squirrels dig? Where will the cats prowl? Will the plants I chose get along together or will some thrive and some struggle? Which will try to take over the container, and which will be crowded out by its neighbors?
Even rejuvenating an old garden with new additions has questions and possibilities. The moments before transferring them to their containers, everything is still What Might Be, unshadowed by What Could Have Been.
I remember reading that when you’re repotting, it’s important to gently disturb the roots of a rootbound plant before you place it in its new, larger pot, or it doesn’t realize that it’s in the new pot at all and the roots just continue to grow inward, blind to the potential of the new soil around it. Instead of growing and thriving it continues to be stunted.
It’s time to head to the plant nursery, to find new plants and add them to my garden, after gently disturbing the roots.
Perhaps my own roots need gentle disturbing? Will it help my spiritual growth?
– Barbara Ryther