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Learning from Plants

  • Writer: Pätrick K
    Pätrick K
  • Nov 12, 2019
  • 3 min read

Updated: Jan 25, 2020













From time of a wee little me, I have always appreciated taking vegetable seeds out to the garden, digging little holes, adding a little water, and waiting for the new greens to come up.  I was fascinated as to the evolutionary purpose of the cotyledons, and felt they could determine the vigorous over-performers for the season right out the gate.


Over the last few years, especially, I have grown more an affinity towards plants-, scouting out new ones to explore cultivating, the education of their husbandry, and how to merry them together in the portraits of our landscape.  I should also include my expanded thought on how energy and spirit move about, and it exchanged.  Some of these two topics also merged together within the hobby.  I think about things around how the roots grow towards each other.  


*nerd alert* 


Research has proved plants communicate with each other, sometimes in fascinating ways.  For example, a plant damaged above the surface (in a means they cannot recover from) the roots below may be cut off from nutrients from the roots of other, stronger, plants.  Cut throat!  Also, this can be seen in reverse, where the weaker plant is relented medicinal qualities in the soil, to the sacrifice of other.  They can also merge rooting systems and cross communicate by alerting each other to wilt leaves (giving the appearance of being in ill condition), or a ‘heads up’ to offer pungent oils/smells to repel dangers, and/or more.  These are just general on-goings of plants...there are so many unique things beyond these examples of plant communication.


How fascinating!

But there is also the energy transference above ground that we all appreciate.  Obviously, 'fresh air'...right?  With choosing the foliage and blooms around you, there is evidence in ‘color psychology’ that is beneficial for the inter-species exchange as a byproduct of living alongside of plants.  Spiritually, it is believed that plants absorb negative energy and bad vibes, which is another area of life I have found a push to embrace this hobby. *plants a billion seeds around me*  I have been making a big push to work on landscaping around me when I can’t be productive in other areas of my life, but not getting so lost within the symptoms of mental health.  I believe a lot of this benefit can be traced to installing all these botanical beauties around our property, more immediate to where we live.  (Do I sound ‘hippy dippy’?...oh well!) 


There are other things, like blooms, offering scented and visual nostalgia triggers for a positive flood of beneficial hormones into our systems.  One of my favorite parts of gardening is actually blending the opinions of Caleb’s and mine as to ‘what looks good’.  I am constantly scouting out new plants or identifying new areas to beautify with plants in our zone.  Caleb likes tulips...and I look up colors, and bloom times, and sizes to narrow down to pull from.  He loves honeysuckle...so I look up the sterile noninvasive varieties for our area to narrow down the perfect varieties for us.  Something new I learned that Caleb likes, is hedges...


...so I had to get on board with hedges.  The way he pushes my boundaries is a good thing overall most of the time. I typically like the ‘grow free’ idea of plants...but some do require maintenance.  In fact, our mini-orchard is pruned in a way that is shaping to be a canopy, for an element of a ‘secret garden’ that Caleb wants to be able to be hidden in and share sweet kisses.  I came around to a few pest-resistance options.  One of which was the ‘wedding ring boxwood’.


I found the variation of the yellow-green bordering the circular ever-forest-green center of the leaves to be perfect to add in the landscape around us.  I ordered a bunch for fall planting this year, and mapped out a semi-circle hedge around outside our bedroom. 


Today they arrived, pretty freaking late for my area in planting.  They are gorgeous in their established growth, their new growth is already damaged by frost conditions in shipping...but ehhh.  Spacing these out in the future established hedge right outside our bedroom brought me some grounding comfort today.  These will offer a visual distraction, balancing anxiety and the unknown fears with another space to refocus my shit to what is real, present, and full of love.


Today was an unexpected day to plant new growth and renewed growth of the self, betterment, and symbolic faith in commitment (someone forever loves me for me, beyond my inner struggles- reminding myself of this as much as possible is profound).












 
 
 

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