Basil -- Abundance

The herb garden is on the south side of the greenhouse, where the sun cuts through the glass in long gold panels. It smells different here. Not the wet-earth musk of the fern corner but something brighter -- peppery, warm, almost edible. Rows of terracotta pots line a weathered wooden table, each one overflowing with green.

Theo is already here, pinching something off a plant with his thumbnail. He holds up a sprig and crushes it between his fingers, then holds his hand out toward you.

"Smell that."

You lean in. Basil. But not the pale grocery-store kind. This is deep, almost clove-like, sweet and sharp at the same time. The scent fills your sinuses and you breathe deeper without meaning to.

"Know why this one's so full?" Theo asks, gesturing at the pot. It's absurd -- a dome of bright green leaves so thick you can't see the soil underneath. "Because I cut it back every three days." He shows you the stem where he just pinched. Already, two tiny leaf buds are forming at the node below the cut. "Every time I take something away, it sends out two new branches. Cut one stem, get two. Cut those two, get four."

He hands you the sprig he pinched. You hold it, still fragrant, still warm from the sun.

"People are afraid to cut things," he says. He runs a dirty hand over the top of the basil dome. "Projects. Relationships. Drafts. Habits. They hold on to everything because cutting feels like loss." He taps the place where he pinched. "But the plant knows something you forgot. Pruning creates abundance. The cut is the invitation. The loss is the signal to grow."

You look at the basil -- impossibly lush, impossibly full, grown that way precisely because someone kept taking from it. Every removal a multiplication.

"What do you need to cut back?" Theo asks. Not unkindly. "Because whatever it is, it's probably ready to branch."

---

Basil -- $0.99

Cut it back. Watch it double. The loss you're afraid of is the abundance waiting to happen.