How It Started vs. How It’s Going: A Gardening Debacle
Day 20 of Taurus Month
Taurus is the seeding season, and I am walking the I AM Path with Matías De Stefano, author of Conversations Between I and AM. At the start of the month he gave us an exercise: plant seeds in a glass or a pot, water them daily with the theme of each day, and at the end of thirty days, eat what grew. The seed is the source, he said. Become a seed.
So I got a glass.
I googled. The internet said lima beans. I bought lima beans. Day one, I soaked them in water as the instructions said. I put them in the glass. I told my son, we’re going to say nice things to this plant. Thank you. Good morning. We love you.
And then I waited for the seeds to grow.
Nothing. Nothing happened.
So I thought, maybe I’m overwatering. I moved it to the sun. Still nothing. By day three, I had decided the seeds themselves were the problem, so I went to the grocery store for more.
I did not come back with more lima beans.
I came back with sunflower seeds, turnips, mung beans, broccoli sprouts, and a couple of packets I no longer recognize the names of. I HAVE was the month’s mantra. If I was going to manifest abundance, I figured I might as well manifest all of it. The affirmations were working, on my shopping, at least.
It was somewhere around day eight that Matías posted a video showing how his plants were doing, and the shock on my face when I saw soil in his glass. Plus, his plants were already thriving. Casually. Nobody had said anything about soil. I had been watering lima beans floating in a glass of water and cotton wool for five days while telling them they were loved.
I ran outside. I dug up dirt. I jammed the lima beans into it. Still nothing. No roots. No sprouts. Plus, now there was a distinct rotten smell.
This is where it escalated.
I realized maybe I needed to give them the best chance of survival, that the outside dirt just didn’t have the right nutrients. So my son and I went to get some potting soil, and I didn’t spare a penny. I bought the most expensive soil that promised all sorts of amazing new technology for potted plants, including holding water, yielding twice as much produce, and feeding plants for up to 6 months. Wow. Because I had bought way too much soil and not enough pots, I started looking at my existing houseplants and thinking they must also have bad soil. They had been minding their own business for a year. I re-potted all of them. I stood on my balcony, hands covered in dirt, repotting plants I had never previously had a problem with, because clearly the soil was the issue, and now I have better soil.
I overwatered some days. I underwatered others. I gave up on the affirmations partway through because, honestly, I got pissed off at the glass and because the plants were now outside.
Here’s the part I haven’t told anyone.
The lima beans haven’t sprouted. Most of the new seeds haven’t either. And I can’t throw them away. Because I have poured too much love into them. They have had my son’s voice. They have had twenty days of Matías and I HAVE and affirmations and the I AM Path poured into them.
How do you compost seeds you’ve prayed over?
So I keep watering them. Still hoping. Still talking to them. And then this is what makes me laugh: the potatoes and garlic and onions in my pantry, the ones I forget about for three weeks while I’m not cooking, always sprout roots all on their own. The ones I ignore. The ones I never bless, never affirm, never sing to.
The forgotten produce in the pantry is doing better than the worshipped seeds in the glass.
Taurus is laughing at me. I am going to let her.
There is one thing in my whole windowsill experiment that is actually growing, and it grew because I left it alone enough. Radishes. I didn’t even know they were radishes until I took a picture and looked them up. I had labeled them as broccoli sprouts, mung beans, and a few packets I forgot the names of. They have been the only consistent green thing in this whole month. I am going to eat them as microgreens this week.
Today is day 20.
Here is what I have actually learned in the past twenty days of trying to grow things during Taurus month:
Affirmations do not replace soil. Manifesting abundance and overwatering look identical from the outside. You cannot speed up a root by talking to it. The plants I already had were not the problem: the impatience was. And mung beans do not care about my affirmations. They just grow. So do radishes, apparently, when you don’t realize what they are.
The deeper one, the one I didn’t want to write down: matter doesn’t respond to how much I pour in. It responds to whether the conditions are right. The intentions are real. The affirmations are sincere. And the lima beans needed soil from day one, not affirmations.
I am a Pisces sun in the 6th house. I live in my mind. My mind is strong. It is all mentalism anyway. Taurus is the weapon fashioned against me, the slow, the daily, the embodied, the small, consistent discipline that has always been the hardest thing for me to practice.
Pisces believes devotion can bend reality.
Pisces sings to the seed. Dreams for it. Sees the future flower before the root exists. It lives through imagination, symbolism, projection, and meaning.
Taurus does not care about the vision first.
Taurus asks: Did you water it correctly? Is there soil? Is there sunlight? Are the conditions stable enough to sustain life every day?
Pisces is the dream. Taurus is the root system.
And I think this month exposed how often I have tried to grow things through emotional intensity instead of structure. I wanted manifestation without repetition. Transformation without routine. Growth without waiting.
But matter has its own laws.
Matter responds to consistency. To conditions. To embodiment. To physical reality.
Not just belief.
Matter is Taurus. Taurus is Venustas, Firmitas, Utilitas — beauty, firmness, utility. You need all three. I had brought a lot of beauty, almost no firmness, and very little utility, and then I was confused when nothing grew.
The mung beans had all three from the beginning. So did the radishes I didn’t even know I was growing. So does the garlic in the pantry, which I never thought to look at. That is why they are alive.
The lima beans became a perfect symbol for how I have tried to build parts of my life: enormous devotion, enormous imagination, enormous emotional energy, but weak foundations. Beautiful vision. Unstable structure. Pisces without enough Taurus.
But it is day 20, and I have not given up. I have ten more days of Taurus. Ten more days of affirmations and meditations and watering things that may or may not grow. The radishes are real. The garlic is real. The mung beans are real. The lima beans are still soaking in soil that I will not throw away.
Eternal optimist. Delulu Pisces. Whatever you want to call her. She is still gardening.
Today is day 20. 🤍
When Eva is not caring for others, she is on her balcony talking to lima beans that have not yet decided to cooperate. Her son has been rooting for them since day one. She is still hopeful. It is day 20.
She writes about the worth wound, shadow work, and what happens when Pisces tries to grow things in Taurus season, one honest essay at a time.
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