Imagine you’re cooking dinner on a cozy, zen night. Homemade tomato soup is the star of tonight’s menu. While chopping herbs, you find to your dismay that you’ve forgotten to get basil on your last grocery run. A tomato soup without basil!? Nonsense. You’re not about to run back to the store just to buy a single ingredient. Thankfully, you won’t have to, since you’ve got a thriving basil plant in your backyard. Problem solved.
I’m just riffing off a memory of a YouTube cooking video I once watched where the chef left his kitchen mid-cooking to grab plants from his backyard. What a flex, I thought, to have your own garden handy for all your last minute garnishing needs. I’ve personally never been a huge fan of gardening, but it’s something my inner cottagecore bitch aspires to excel in. The most experience I’ve had was planting tomatoes right in front of my house when I was younger, and my mom using the tomatoes to make tomato egg stir fry, or watching my dad grow garlic chives, which for a while I just thought was literal grass, and also having that be added to our home cooked dishes. Oh, and also planting cosmos and tulips in Animal Crossing, if that counts.
The point is, despite my horticultural failings, gardening is definitely a wholesome and fulfilling way to spend your time. Not only do you learn valuable lessons about nature, but you also get to consume the fruits of your labor. Literally. Now that it’s summer, there’s no better time to give it a shot. According to a quick internet search, some of the easiest plants to grow are tomatoes, lettuce, green beans, carrots and cucumbers. Pretty basic, but everyone’s gotta start somewhere. And who knows, you might just catch the gardening bug that’ll have you never tasting store-bought produce the same way ever again.
But the real gardening gurus are already one step ahead of us, reaping their fresh harvests on the daily after grinding neck deep in seeds and soil. If this sounds like you, or even if you’re just a humble plant mother nurturing your mint plant or mushroom farm on the windowsill, a gardening tattoo is a bright idea. With one, the beauty of your budding paradise won’t have to stay stuck in one place—it’ll be out and about for all the world to see.
