100 and Under
My Inspiration From Nature While Doing Gardening
Nature just has a way to teach us many lessons in life on earth, if you were to pay attention.
Just like many people all over the world, I was into gardening during the Covid-19 lockdown. I like anything thatās beautiful, including flowers and plants. I love how the plants liven up the living environment.
After having āconqueredā the beautifying indoor plants, I turned my attention to the more challenging gardening ā growing the vegetables. Itās more challenging because you need to know the ways to plant it for different veggies, either from its seed, stem, or root. Besides, you also need to know the thriving environment, e.g. the temperature, the type of soil, the watering frequency, etc.
Growing veggies needs patience, as it usually takes a few months to almost a year for the harvest, depending on the type of veggie. There are several stages that need to go through, from germination to harvest, very much like a baby growing up into adulthood. In fact, it is very similar to human life in this world.
As a novice in veggie gardening, I had tried planting pumpkin, chili, bell pepper, melon, ladyfingers(okra), etc. Being inexperienced and never doing proper homework, I just scattered the bell pepper seeds in a medium-sized nursery pot out of convenience, thinking that only a few would germinate.
It surprised me that after ten days there were many mini-plants sprouted out, as I never expected that the germination rate could be so high! After another week or two, they grew bigger and bigger, and the nursery pot was becoming congested.
From my learning on YouTube, I need to transplant each of them into an individual pot so that they can grow up healthily. Otherwise, they will have to fight for the limited nutrients in the soil and also the sunlight.
This reminds me of the competition in our world.
I was told to choose the bigger and healthier-looking ones for the transplant as they stand a higher chance of growing into full bloom. If you have too many of them, you canāt transplant each of them, then you have to ākillā those smaller and unhealthy ones.
This reminds me that only the fittest stay in our world.
I also had planted Chinese Spinach, but it turned out that it was ladyfingers(Okra)! Blamed the torn-out label. Hahahaā¦
This time, I arranged the seeds neatly in a few rows in a bigger plating pot. It delighted me after it was almost 100% germination and they grew to be very healthy plants. As time passed by, I realized it was not Chinese Spinach but Ladyfingers!
Again, I need to transplant it to a bigger space after some time. As I didnāt have enough pot to accommodate all of them, I had no choice but to āmigrateā most of them into a piece of small land outside of my house compound. I knew that the land was not fertile, but did it anyway thinking that I could add some fertilizer to it.
To my great disappointment, the fertilizer didnāt help, and I felt disheartened that all the beautiful plants had withered and died one by one. I felt like I had āpoisonedā them!
In contrast, those few that I had transplanted into the pot had grown more healthily and steadily.
This reminds me of the different environments that shape what we become.
Those kids that are nurtured and protected by their parents thrive while those that are not could lead to their destruction.
The plantās life cycle is very similar to us humansā life cycle, arenāt they?
Takeaway
We humans, as the highest form of creature, bow down to Mother Nature when she is āangryā at us, for not living in harmony and co-existing with her other creations. Perhaps thatās why we have this Covid-19 pandemic?
