It started in 2020. The world locked down, the calendar emptied, and people quietly began reaching for things they had never had time for before. Hobbies surfaced. Interests bloomed. And somewhere in that strange, suspended pause, a green thumb arrived uninvited and turned out to be the most joyful, most comedic houseguest imaginable.
Picture this. A new home, a backyard, and the bold decision to start from a clean slate. Tilling the soil, laying fresh topsoil, seeding new grass and then watching it the way only a first timer can, with the intensity of someone monitoring something sacred. It became a family affair quickly. Think of that scene from Honey I Shrunk the Kids, the father tiptoeing across the lawn, arms outstretched, balancing himself like a human weighing scale, desperate not to crush the tiny things he loves. That was us. Ridiculous, tender and completely serious about it.
Then came Floret. An Instagram page that stopped the scroll. Rows of the most gorgeous flowers arranged like the world had been quietly beautiful all along and nobody had told us. Behind it was Erin Benzakein, a farmer, author and one of the most beloved voices in the world of flower growing, with her own farm in Washington, books that have become staples for flower lovers, and a show that brought her craft to an even wider audience. At the time though, it just felt like stumbling onto something rare and generous. The freebies were downloaded. The reels were watched on a loop. And just like that, a whole world opened up. Birds arriving for seeds. Bees doing their quiet, essential work. Butterflies landing and staying a while. It pulled up old memories too, of plucking roses as a child and watching those monarch butterflies sit still on the petals for what felt like hours, completely absorbed in the nectar, unbothered by the small face watching them up close.
There was also the mad phase, which deserves its own honest mention. Eighty dollars’ worth of hydrangeas. Gone in three months. A beautiful, expensive lesson. After that, low maintenance became the new philosophy and surprisingly, a better one.
Then spring comes. That first crisp air after a long winter. And after years of watering, feeding, pruning, researching, losing plants and trying again, something shifts. You stop killing them. Things actually grow. Daffodils push through. Iris, tiger lilies, peonies follow in their own time. You photograph them and send the pictures to a colleague who shares the same quiet obsession, and the two of you spend all spring and summer exchanging blooms like dispatches from a better world.
There is a lyric that still makes me laugh. “Despite the fact that you’ve killed all my plants,” from Don’t Write Me Off, a song from the 2007 film Music and Lyrics. Funny because it was once too real.
And then there is the fragrance. Fresh cut flowers from your own garden, carried inside, lingering for days and then weeks. A smell that belongs entirely to something you grew with your own hands and your own patience.
When everything outside goes sideways, and it often does, there is something quietly powerful about walking into a garden that waited for you. That bloomed anyway. That kept its word.
And if you need a reminder of that, step outside in May. The earth already knows. It has been preparing since February, quietly, without being asked. Right on time for Mother’s Day, when the peonies open and the world smells like something worth staying for.
Hope, it turns out, is a perennial.
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Ajita’s Headspace was born from ruminations and memories finding their way out through storytelling.
The author is an artist and designer based in the tri-state area.
Parikh Worldwide Media is the largest Indian-American publishing group in the United States. The group publishes five periodicals – “News India Times,” a national weekly newspaper; “Desi Talk in New York,” a weekly newspaper serving the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut region; and “Desi Talk in Chicago,” a weekly newspaper serving the Greater Chicago area and the Midwestern states; and “The Indian American,” a national online quarterly feature magazine, and the Gujarat Times, a Gujarati language weekly. The combined circulation and readership of these publications make the media group the most influential in the ethnic Indian market.
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