Neem, Plants & the Wisdom of Using What We Have 🌱

A Little About What I’ve Been Discovering

Lately, I’ve been spending more time with plants, composting, and learning about vermicast and, surprisingly, it has been changing the way I look at everyday life. I recently dehydrated some neem leaves and started learning more about how farmers have traditionally used neem in their gardens and crops. One simple plant led me down a whole path of curiosity. I decided to crush the dried neem leaves into a powder and add some to my compost bin, which had started to feel a little out of balance, with larvae appearing.

Then I waited…

A few weeks later, I looked inside and the lovely worms had taken over! Yay! 🪱🌱 It was such a small thing, but watching the compost change made me realize how much is happening beneath the surface, even when we can’t see it. The more I compost, the more I question our idea of “waste.”

We throw away food scraps, leaves, and organic matter without thinking twice. But when you watch that same material transform as worms turn what we discard into rich vermicast and it becomes part of healthy soil you start to see things differently.

What we call waste can become nourishment.

What looks finished can become a beginning.

And somehow, this simple realization has made me look at other parts of my life differently too. Maybe we don’t always need more. Maybe we need to slow down and pay attention to what is already around us. This is something I keep coming back to through movement, relationships, art, yoga, philosophy, nature, and the ocean. They may seem like completely different subjects, but the more I explore them, the more I notice the connections.

Everything is in relationship.

Our bodies.
Our food.
The earth.
The plants.
The animals.
The people we love.
And the choices we make every day.

I’m not sure I have all the answers. I’m simply becoming more curious about composting and vermicomposting, and that curiosity is really what I want to share here: the things I’m learning, questioning, discovering, and sometimes completely rethinking.

A neem leaf.
A handful of compost.
A worm transforming the soil.

Small things, perhaps. But sometimes the smallest things can change the way we see the whole picture.

And maybe that is where real change begins: not with having all the answers, but with learning to look again. 🌿