How much plant life do you keep in your home or office environment?
There was a time that I had resigned myself to accept that I am terrible at taking care of plants and flowers.
I would have sworn that I was simply not able to keep them alive. I’d either forget about them or drown them. Plus, I never really had much of a yard to work with in attempt to have any kind of garden outside my home that’s for sure. The closest I ever came to being successful at growing anything was on Farmville. (Heh, yeah seriously.)
Then one day I was reading an article about herbs and their health improving properties, and I remembered that I had bought a few of those tiny herb kits at the dollar spot in Target.
I really have no idea why I purchased them other than the fact that I liked the adorable tiny pots that they came in. I know, it’s bad to do this. I actually avoid the dollar spot these days because I would always find something that would end up sitting in a box in a closet forgotten but taking up space.
Anyways, back to the point, I decided to dig out the little herb garden starter kits and try to grow them. To my surprise, they actually started growing! (See my photo of them above.)
I found nurturing the tiny little seeds to grow to be quite relaxing and rewarding.
This is an infant liquid medicine dispenser.
I gave them each tiny drops of water to drink every day. – Just enough to get the soil completely wet and I used an infant liquid medicine dispenser. (I know it probably sounds way to over-cautious to those of you with a green thumb, but like I said, I was pretty certain that when I took care of plants before I would either over or under water them.)
Because I enjoyed this little activity so much, I decided to look up the benefits of gardening. Turns out that leisure gardening is actually a newer type of therapy called horticulture therapy. Who knew?
From John Goodman’s Health Policy Blog post about Plant Therapy:
“A number of studies have already indicated that just looking at plants or nature can help alleviate stress, perceptions of pain and improve mood among patients. More recently, studies have gone further to indicate that the act of gardening can also have dramatic and restorative effects on health.”
Sometimes, I get lucky and am sent an extremely encouraging message exactly when I need it. 
So apparently (before environmental, psychological, or ecological interventions) we all have similar preset “settings” that regulate the body’s daily biological clock. 
)
Who does that? Oh, wait… I actually do strive to. See my 
I’m sitting alone (well at least I have no children sitting around me) in a random Starbucks contemplating all of the things that I am going to get accomplished this year.
You know I’m always trying to learn new, more efficient ways to take better care of my health. Sometimes, it’s the old ways that benefit us the most.
I have always loved music. Most people do. In my teens, I would listen to music all the time. I’m not really sure when I stopped listening to it all that much.
I was just watching Dr. Oz and they had a little segment about anti-aging stuff you can get at the dollar store. Who knew? So, I took some notes and now I am passing this along.