My fondest memories of my mom as I grew up all involve plants, trees and flowers. Every weekend, after we had gone to the market and brought home the weeks supply of food, my mom would cook our breakfast for us and we would eat together at the family dining table with my siblings. Then she would head to the garden to start her weekly gardening routine. I would be left in the kitchen to clean up and put the raw food away in the freezer. Then, when I was done there, I would go to the garden to look for my mother. She would be puttering around the garden, creating a new way to organize the pots and plants according to some mysterious plan only obvious to her. I would help her by lifting the pots and plants that were too heavy for her and going into the kitchen to find a suitable kitchen knife she could use for trimming stems and leaves. More often than not, she would somehow forget where she put the kitchen knife as she worked in the garden - meaning there are probably at least a dozen kitchen knives buried in various areas of the soil there. I learned a lot from this weekly ritual, like which plants were banned from inside the house because my parrot liked to chew on plants and could get poisoned by the sap of the plant. I also learned to honestly love gardening which is why even here in the condo I have a mini garden. Much of my childhood was spent doing gardening with my mother regularly. To fuel this love for all things green and earthy, my mom would bring home books from her travels, all about gardening, farming, composting, and even books about flower arrangements. Admittedly, my mom knows far more than me about plants, trees and flowers up to now. But then the happiness in gardening comes with slowly learning how to pick the right plants in the right season for the right reasons, not in cramming dull facts into your head. Because of this, I have learned to be happy even in my mini garden here in the condo, because there is really something great about watching a seed or a cutting put out new shoots and start to grow over time right in front of your eyes. So I have my mother to thank for that.
Posted on: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 08:10:12 +0000