Nature Versus Nurture

My mother had a green thumb. I can’t remember there ever being a time when she wasn’t growing something inside the house, and usually outside too. I don’t seem to have inherited that gift, and honestly I haven’t tried too hard to cultivate it.

My husband and I have talked a lot lately about nature versus nurture, as we watch our three children marching quickly into adulthood. We wonder if we nurtured the right qualities in them, and how much is their nature going to take, over no matter what we tried.

I found myself out on the back deck today, digging through the myriad of pots I have from my various attempts to have a flowering area. First I stuck in the peony remnants from my mishap with the weed eater last weekend. Then I potted the dried up basil plant my husband bought that he stuck outside with no rain for a week. While looking through the rest of the pots and seeing the various growing plants coming up that I do not recognize, I remembered something my mother told me. I asked her one time what some plant was growing in a pot on her porch and she said she didn’t know. It was some “weed”, but she liked how it looked and so she stuck it in a pot and let it be itself. So I cleaned up and moved around and kept what are probably weeds in pots on my deck. Who’s to say what has value and what doesn’t while it’s growing? I’ll nurture and see what happens. If I need to do some “weeding” later, I will.

I know there are some “weeds” in my children that will need clearing out (not by me but by life), but sometimes nature’s “weeds” bloom into something beautiful that just hasn’t been recognized yet. I think I’ll just nurture and watch. Both my pots on the deck and our children.