Joyful Living With Beautiful Flowers And Community

In response to Dancing Elephants Prompt 14/52

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” Winston Churchhill“

Community work brings joy and happiness

I love to do community work. It gives me joy and happiness. I never shied away even once from service.

When I was asked to be part of the Managing Committee of the vicinity where I lived I was delighted that I would get a chance to serve people.

I was even more excited when horticulture was entrusted to me as my responsibility.

The word horticulture is derived from two Latin words (hortus[garden]+cultura [culture]).

This meant that the trees, the parks, and the gardens would be my specific responsibility with another resident friend who maintained one of the best gardens.

I often remembered the quote from Albert Einstein

“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”

In the past two years community service has brought me joy and happiness. I have learned to nurture mother earth.

I learned the basic needs of different kinds of plants and how different plants have their own requirement for light, soil, water, and nutrients. Seedlings need extra care in order to thrive.

It was important to understand that plants needed the optimal temperature for germination, using the right soil, and providing sufficient light will allow seedlings to develop into healthy plants.

We have to be careful to see which plants need the sun or more light to thrive.

Some plants are happier in the shade and you have to plant them there.

Certain buds open into flowers when the sun comes out and close when it goes.

A home garden is small whereas community gardens and parks are quite big.

The area where I live has beautiful trees. They have to be maintained, pruned watered, and taken care of.

While I am happy looking after the plants, I feel happiness brings excitement, pleasure, and satisfaction to me but I feel the joyfulness that to me is complementary to happiness and has resulted in inner peace and contentment while spending time with the plants.

I loved plants but now I have a passion for them. When one seedling does not survive, it gives me a feeling of pain. I feel I did not care enough for the plant and should have seen what the plant wanted.

Did I give it sufficient water? Did I water it too much? Was it fond of being in the sun or in the shade?

The plants have become my babies. I find them living beings and talk to them, stroke them and smile at them. The three gardeners who we have hired are also quite passionate about the plants and nurse them every day. The moment the plant grows and there are buds and the flowers grow I see a special smile on their faces.

These days the garden has begun to bloom. Kale is beautiful. It looks like cauliflower and the gardens are resplendent in its beauty in colors of white and green and purple. We also have marigolds, petunias, impatience, butter cups, poppies, and calendula. We are awaiting sweet peas, salvia, and dahlias to bud and bloom soon.

Each year the garden blooms differently. Sometimes early and sometimes late showing us that nature has its own will and time to do what it thinks fright. This is how they connect the seasons of life with it.

How plants can bring joy to people

The love for plants is inborn. You can either love them or not feel for them. They grow on you if you are a little interested in them. In my experience of looking after plants, I felt that plants bring a lot of joy to us.

Some of my thoughts on how plants bring joy are discussed below:

• Plants can brighten our spaces, and freshen the air, they are a great reminder of when, and how, to take care of ourselves.
• Plants link us to nature. They remind us of different seasons in our life. They cannot always be the same. Plants can help you to appreciate how our lives and internal states are sometimes struggling, not always blooming, but always valid. With the cycles of life, it is easy to trap in the wisdom of how you view life.
• Plants remind us that we need to take care of ourselves. We have to give ourselves adequate fresh air and self-love to keep ourselves mentally and physically alive. They help us to be creative as we have to learn to see them thrive and grow into healthy plants.
• Plants help greatly in accelerating the healing process. The presence of plants helps patients recover from illness to healing faster, due to the soothing effects of ornamental horticulture.

The takeaways

• Community work is enjoyable when you get a chance to give service in the area in which you are interested in working.
• Choose an area that you would like to work in if you get a chance to do so. Since I was interested in plants and I was given this responsibility the involvement became more intense as I passionately love the plants and am interested in putting in my best effort.
• Whenever you choose to do community work involvement is very important. Without giving time you can never put in an effort.
• Learn to understand and know more about your work. Even though it is voluntary work you cannot have joy in the work unless you do a bit of research and have an in-depth learning of the subject.
• Plants bring joy to all and also provide a healing and soothing environment. It complements community service by helping people to have a joyful life.
• Plants teach us to be creative. They are sensitive to weather, soil, and air and we have to creatively carve out places to organize them in the right place and environmental conditions that helps them grow,

To wrap up

The joy of living is the essence of life. Plants give us love and community service a chance to work for people around us.

Community service and plants have given me joy, peace, and contentment. It has also inculcated a life of involvement, discipline, and patience in me.

It has given me happiness and love for life. I have developed a strong emotional connection with plants. I find it deeply moving to be able to see seeds germinating into plants.

My experience in the last two years has been very rewarding. I have found real joy in new growth I find the seasonal change of plants follows a pattern very much like our life.

I have found joy both with community work and plants.

Thank you Dr. Gabriella Korosi for the prompt on joyfulness in our lives.

©Dr. Preeti Singh, 2023.

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