Her Next Chapters

43. Life & Parenting: Lessons from the Garden

• Christina Kohl

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Have you ever thought about how nurturing a garden mirrors the journey of raising children? This week on podcast I dive into my personal experiences as a mom and gardener to explore this beautiful analogy. From the thrill of seeing the first seedlings sprout to the challenges of transplanting young plants into new environments, parallels to parenting are everywhere.


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Christina Kohl:

Hi and welcome to Her Next Chapter's podcast. I'm your host, cChristina Cole. I'm a mom of three and soon to be an empty nester. I'm also a certified HR pro who restarted my career after being a stay-at-home mom for over a decade. I created this podcast to connect with moms who have an empty nest on the horizon and are wanting to redefine their identity outside of motherhood, which might include a job search. On this show, we'll have raw conversations about our ever-changing roles as moms. We'll hear from women who restarted their careers and share tips for a job search after a career break. So if that's you, you're in the right place. Friend, let's get started. Hi, friends, and welcome to this week's episode of Her Next Chapters. As always, I'm so glad to have you here with me. Whether you are walking the dog, working in your garden, maybe you're running errands and I'm playing through the car radio. Welcome, and I'm so glad you're here. I'm playing through the car radio. Welcome, and I'm so glad you're here.

Christina Kohl:

So, speaking of gardening, I don't know how many of you are gardeners, but I have a garden. I'm not a master gardener, but I have a wonderful backyard garden that I've had for years, and there's so many things about gardening that, I think, relate to parenting. Having a garden is kind of a metaphor for having a family. Parenting, having a garden is kind of a metaphor for having a family, and so I want to kind of draw some analogies, since I'm in gardening mode and, obviously, family mode and maybe you can relate to some of this too. So first of all, gardening. Some people are like oh, you know, I don't have a green thumb, I can never grow anything. Reality is, nature kind of takes over. So you don't have to be perfect. You need soil, you need warmth, right. You can't have a garden in the wintertime, at least not outdoors in Colorado. So you need soil, you need warmth, you need light and you need water. There's not an exact formula, at least not for what I do. Maybe farmers have something more exact, but it doesn't have to be perfect. But you have to show up and you have to make sure that those elements are in place. Same thing with our kids. They need love most of all, they need us and they need to be nurtured. And so when we plant the seeds, we don't see the germination that's going on underneath, right. So I'm going. It takes a couple of weeks and it's every single day I'm watering dirt. I can't see what's happening underground. All I'm doing is watering the dirt and making sure that the light is on, making sure that the heaters are on and there's no feedback. But if I didn't go down and tend to those seeds every day, nothing would happen because we'd be missing a key ingredient the water. And then, when those seeds start to emerge, it's so exciting and just like when our kids, their personalities, start to emerge and they're growing as a person. It is so exciting to see that. And then, as the plants that I'm nurturing in my basement nursery, when they're ready to go outside to the garden, it's a big transition and they're being transplanted into a new environment, which is when our kids go off to school, whether it's any school, whether it's elementary school, middle school, high school or college. College is the biggest transition that my kids are going through at this point in time and it's a transition. And they're being transplanted, just like my plants when I transplant them out into the garden. It's a transition and they're being transplanted, just like my plants. When I transplant them out into the garden. It is a shock.

Christina Kohl:

My tomatoes this year; it was a bit cold after I transplanted them and I was afraid I was going to lose them. They all looked horrible and I was just like so, lamenting, like here I nurtured them from the time they were little tiny seedlings and grew them and nurtured them until they're like a foot tall and they're bushy and they're ready to go outside. And then they just lost a bunch of leaves and were wilted and just looked horrible. But you know what? They're resilient and they came back and right now there are these plants that are like four feet tall and they're overflowing with tomatoes. Many of them are red. I picked a bunch today and so those transitions for our plants and our kids can be a little hard, a little bumpy, but they're going to be resilient and they're going to make it.

Christina Kohl:

The other thing with the garden that I've had to do is, in the early season we protect the plants, we put them in walls of water and if you're not a gardener or if you don't garden in places where it's cold, walls of water are basically what it sounds like, but they're usually green or transparent and there's like all these tubes that are connected and it goes in a circle, kind of like a teepee, so you fill each tube with water and they all kind of lean inwards towards each other. So the bottom part is a bigger circle and then all those individual walls. It's all connected but it all leans together and so that the top is pretty much closed and it acts as insulation and allows sunlight through and it captures warmth. And so we're protecting those plants when they first go out to the garden, into the elements, and allow them to grow and be nurtured and be in a perfect environment, regardless of what the weather is outside.

Christina Kohl:

But if you leave a plant in the protection, in the wall of water, for too long, it's going to stunt its growth, it's going to get too hot and it's going to be wilted and it's just not going to perform well, it's not going to be healthy. So at some point you have to remove the protection, you have to remove the wall of water, and that can be a challenge for us as parents to remove that protection that we're so used to. And we know that our plants are safe and if a hailstorm is coming, they're going to be safe. If it's going to get really cold or windy, they're going to be safe. But we can't protect them. If we protect too long, we hurt them, just like our kids. Our kids need the freedom to thrive on their own without our hovering protection over them. So and I'm not going to go into too many details of examples with the kids, I'm just going to draw the metaphors and and take it for for what it's worth. So there's protecting too much.

Christina Kohl:

And then, of course, with gardening, if there's weeds I don't know about you, but no matter what I do, I have weeds. If I put down rock in between the beds, there's still weeds growing. I don't know about you, but no matter what I do, I have weeds. If I put down rock in between the beds, there's still weeds growing in the rock, and I weed all the time and also a weed. I remember learning this from my mom that a weed is any plant that's growing where you don't want it to grow. So there's a reason that dill weed is called dill weed. It's not just dill, it's dill weed because it literally grows everywhere. But I don't weed it. I go ahead and let it grow in my garden wherever it wants. I'm a little bit relaxed kind of gardener where everything's not precise and in its place. So the dill is kind of all over the place, but the other weeds, yeah, I'm constantly pulling.

Christina Kohl:

And then there's a couple of plants that have oregano. That is a bush that is spreading out right now. It's probably taking almost six feet of a garden bed. My beds are about 12 feet long and it is just growing and growing and it's overshadowing the cilantro and I love cilantro and my cilantro just isn't thriving because I've allowed the oregano to take up so much space. And oregano is good, I love oregano. But when you have things out of balance then it's not healthy and it's taking up all that space that something else could be using. And this is not just for our kids. This is a lesson for us too. Like if I'm out of balance, if I'm doing something, that's good, but it's taking up too much time Maybe I'm working too much, which means it's eroding into my free time, my self-care time. You know same thing with our kids If they're doing sports too much and it's taking away from their academics. So in the garden, at this bed in the garden, I've got 12 feet and if the oregano is taking six feet of it when I really only need two feet of oregano, that's more than enough oregano there's something's out of balance. So oregano has become a weed that needs to be pulled and make room for other things that are valuable. And then, right now, I am enjoying the harvest, because it is August when I'm recording this and I think I picked at least a dozen tomatoes today. I'll probably pick another half dozen in the next couple of days.

Christina Kohl:

One thing, just a side note zucchini. If any of you gardeners are out there, you know this. Zucchini you've got to stay on top of, because what looks too small today is going to be a giant in two days. So you've got to time that just right. And they always taste better when on the smaller side, when they're the big, giant clubs, like you know, you could defend yourself with it. They don't taste very good, they you could defend yourself with it. They don't taste very good, they're full of seeds and they're just not very tender.

Christina Kohl:

So that's something with our kids that they can grow up overnight before our eyes, and not just physically, not just a growth spurt of being so tall and grown up, but also their maturity, how much they can mature overnight has just been mind blowing to see the change and difference in my kids, who are now young adults, that are emerging adults, and it's just like where did, where did that happen? It's just a blink of the eye Like no, you were just a little tiny zucchini yesterday and now you're this like full grown, big, big zucchini. So that's. I know that's a weird analogy, um, but it's just. It happens so quickly and you just don't want to miss it.

Christina Kohl:

So enjoy the harvest, enjoy these young adults, enjoy these children, these humans that you have brought into the world and that you have nurtured and cared for and loved and loved on and poured into and have helped them with balance, helped weed out the things that are negative in their lives. Help them have balance in their life and help them find their own way and spread their wings Now I'm talking about birds, but spread their arms, spread their I'm not sure the right analogy with that but for them to realize their full potential without you know, they need our support. And then they need us to be hands-off and still be there just to guide, but not overprotect. So anyway, those are just kind of my ramblings and my thoughts around gardening and because in a week from today I'm going to be dropping my son off at college in his dorm room, getting them all set up, I've just really been a lot of introspective thinking around kids and parenthood, and motherhood and family and, again, since I was out in the garden today, it just all kind of all these thoughts came flooding in, so I am sharing them with you. I hope that you found it helpful.

Christina Kohl:

Whether you're a gardener or not, you know, but if you're listening to this podcast, you are probably a mom, and just knowing that you've done a great job, enjoy the harvest, the harvest being these beautiful, wonderful humans that you have raised and loved and that are your family, and it's just so incredibly rewarding. So congratulations to you, and if you have a kiddo heading off to college, congratulations. Job well done. I know it's hard. There's times I just get overwhelmed like, oh, he's leaving, oh my gosh, I'm not going to see him every day. And that's okay. That's the goal, right? We want them to grow. We've done our job as parents and now it's their, his turn. He's being transplanted yet again and he's going to thrive in his new home and his new environment and spread out and grow and all kinds of wonderful things are going to come out of that.

Christina Kohl:

So, all right, enough of the garden metaphors. Hope this is helpful and, you know, entertaining. And I guess that's it for this week. Have a great week, friends. I will talk to you next time. Bye for now. Thank you so much for listening today. I hope this episode hit home for you and, if you haven't already, be sure to connect with me on LinkedIn and say hello so I can personally thank you for listening. Until next time. Remember, your story is uniquely your own, and your next chapters are ready to begin.