Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature and you can probably hear in the background the stream that runs beside me as I walk on the lane up to Dartmoor,
Which is one of my favourite walks,
Particularly with my elderly dog,
Who basically just likes to sniff along the hedgerows as we go.
And there's a stream that follows the lane all the way up to the moorland and then it cuts across the moor.
Tiny little stream.
But it's wonderful because it just gives this whole lane a sense of moisture and dampness and at the moment everything is green,
So green and dripping with greenness and dampness and nourishment.
We've had a bit of rain.
And do you remember yesterday we were talking about the repotting.
I'd been in the vegetable garden and I'd had to plant up some parsnips and carrots and leeks and I had to take them out of these tiny pots where the seedlings had been planted and grown and now was time to give them space,
Time to plant them up so they could reach their full potential.
And yesterday's question was all about,
You know,
What do you need to plant in your life?
What do you need to plant up and repot?
What do you need to give more time and space to?
Well,
The follow-up question today is actually quite similar,
But it's looking at it in a different way.
And one of the things that my friend and I who I work with on the vegetable plot,
We'd sprinkled some carrot seeds in a very large pot and pretty much all of the seeds took.
We were quite surprised by it really.
And so we've been repotting or replanting those seedlings as much as we can and we've pretty much run out of space.
And one of the hardest things I find as a gardener,
As a novice gardener,
Is I find it really hard to throw away anything that's grown.
And when you plant things up and you plant up from seed,
You often have more plants grow than you need.
In fact,
You have to thin them out,
Particularly if you've planted the seeds straight into the ground.
You have to out the seedlings because otherwise none of the plants will grow very well.
So you have to make choices about which seedlings to pull up.
And I always find that so hard because I just think it's a miracle that anything grows.
It just takes me back to see the green seedling leaves come through and I feel so loath to thin them out.
And yet that's what you've got to do.
So there's choices that I make as I pull up the seedlings that I need to thin out and I pick the ones that look less flourishing or less healthy and they're the ones that go first.
And then I might need to pull out some even more to give more space in order for the veg to grow as strong as it can.
And it's hard.
Thinning seedlings for me is hard and yet it's something that really translates so well across as I reflect in my life about what's needed because you actually need to thin out seedlings in order for plants to become healthy and to grow.
If you allow everything to grow,
Everything to grow,
Then you've just got,
It'll be stunted and small and nothing will reach its full potential.
And for me,
It feels a little bit sometimes like a packet of seeds is a little bit some of the ideas I have in my life.
I sprinkle all these ideas out into life and feel thrilled that some of my ideas take root and I find real excitement in projects or ideas or experiences that I get involved in.
But ultimately,
If every single seed of an idea I plant starts to grow,
I soon find myself overwhelmed and overloaded with where to put my time and energy.
So for me,
This is a really good question to ask myself is what do I need to thin out in my life?
What do I need to take away in order for other things to flourish?
I find that quite a hard one because often there's a lot in my life that I'm engaged with that I really enjoy.
But ultimately,
It's a really important question.
So that's the question I'm asking myself today.
And that's the question I want you to ask yourself.
Be honest,
You don't have to do anything.
Just reflect on it today.
What is it that I need to thin out in my life?
What is it I need to thin out so other things can flourish?
