Take a minute to plant a seed. And a minute a day (or a minute a week, or whenever you feel like it) to check on it afterwards. With no expectations that anything will happen.
This is for people who don’t feel like they have green thumbs or don’t want to commit to gardening. This is for people who want to cultivate patience in tiny minute-long portions of awareness.
With no expectations. Just simple curiosity, and a minute of time to mindfully observe, or water, afterwards.
Day One:
Get a packet of cheap seeds that are easy to succeed with (pansies / violas are good even in wintery-times in lots of places).
Day Two-ish (optional):
Read the instructions. Some seeds might like to be soaked ahead of time. Some seeds like total darkness to germinate, so they’ll advise you to cover them with wet newspaper. Some seeds you just … scatter.
Day Three-ish:
Pick a place or prep a pot to plant your seed.
Day Four-ish:
Plant three to five seeds. Odds are at least one of them will germinate.
And then just … check on it. A minute a day (with no stress if you miss a day, unless you’re in a climate where you need to water whatever-it-is more frequently to keep it from drying out).
You’ll probably have many days where you can’t see any signs of growth above-ground. This is a great 1MD practice of submitting to time passing. Submitting to a process that NEEDS time to pass for transformation to take place.
Use this minute for a reality check: growth and change take time. You can’t expect a plant to flower in one minute, so why do we expect dramatic results from ourselves and others overnight or in an instant of deciding to do something new?
Let the seeds do their thing, letting go of hurrying … letting go of trying to hasten processes (like natural growth) you have no control over: that just require WAITING.
Use this time to observe the weather. The colors of the soil. Maybe admire a little marble or button or stick you poked in your seed-spot to remind you where you planted them.
Just spend a minute looking for new growth, not even trying to make something fancy happen. Just … “I wonder what will happen if I plant this seed … “
Visit the seed — the spot on the ground — with wonder, curiosity, and submission to the process. The odds. The season.
Spend a minute a day seeing where the seed goes.
The seed is a place to visit … a reason to get up and away from whatever ruts you wind up in. The seed is a friend you can check in on without pressure to say the right thing or worry you’ll do something wrong.
“I wonder how my seed is doing today?”