I recommend trying out real gardening, akin to what the author's girlfriend was doing. (Also, she sounds like a cool person! As does the author.) The parallels between virtual gardening and physical gardening became a lot more viscerally true for me once I experienced physical gardening.

Here's my mini-story. SF has a bunch of community gardens but the waitlist for getting your own plot is comically long. 2-3 years. However, the community garden near me has a bunch of apple trees that are volunteer-maintained. I figured that would be a good way to scratch my gardening itch in the meantime. It's been great! The project leader has taught me a lot about maintaining trees. And I've really learned that weeding is a lifelong commitment. They will always come back, and it's a lot easier if you go out there regularly and pull up the small roots. Obvious, and I'm sure you've heard this idea before, but going through this personally with physical gardening really drives home the wisdom of this trite idea. I got lazy this winter due to all the storms and didn't go out there for a couple of months. There are FEET of weeds now. I've taken out 3 wheelbarrows of weeds and am still not done. Ironically I am not that great at keeping on virtual weeding either (fixing bugs regularly). But when I am out there weeding I have literally thought to myself a few times: "I really need to stay on top of my issues..." Also, there is a very interesting lesson to ponder through physical weeding: you do it because those weeds will compete with your tree for resources. Your tree grows less when there's weeds around it. Literal bugs will thrive in the weeds and eventually make their way up to your tree and damage your tree. I know that the makings are there for another visceral lesson but I don't quite feel that one deep in my bones yet... I guess I've been lucky to not have to work on projects with suffocating tech debt...