There Is No Home For Me Without Plants
I need their energy around me always
I have never lived in a home without plants, and I know I never want or intend to.
I come from a people who have loved the earth, tilled its soil, grew their food, and tended to its crops.
Following the cycle of growing, reaping, and fallowing.
The home of my childhood boasted beautiful plans both indoors as well as outside.
The indoor plants were beautiful and healthy. We often placed them on the patio and stairs for the additional sun.
When the rains came, we were instructed to leave them outside for some time as rainwater provided added benefits.
Hutchinson in 1957 showed that rainwater is a mixed electrolyte. See his book here. You have to know that when minerals dissolve in water, it produces charged ions — negative and positive. These are your electrolytes which are very important. Rainwater has major ions and minor ions.
The major constituents are the following — sodium, bicarbonate, magnesium, calcium, chloride, potassium, and sulfate. They are usually combined with nitrogenous compounds such as ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, and nitrogen.
The minor ions include iron, bromine, boron, iodine, silica, and alumina. Other components are added depending on your location such as dust particles, sand, and pollen, among others.
From a very young age, because we always had a farm that kept us fed and healthy, I came to understand that plants and humans had a symbiotic and indispensable relationship.
Besides beautifying a space, plants utilize expelled carbon dioxide and returned oxygen for us to live.
I instinctively understood that plants were living creatures and as such possessed a soul if you wish and I began admiring and thanking them for providing and caring for us in a thousand ways.
I also speak to them.
This past summer during the drought my apple tree was dying and I was so distressed, I kept speaking to it each day asking it not to die. It is still alive today. I adore all plants.
In each place I have ever lived in, I have never felt at home there unless I have brought my other family members in — the houseplants.
They liven up a space in ways only those who love and respect them can understand.
And because they are living beings, they require our love and attention. And astoundingly they respond in joyful ways to our love and care. Many people say they do not have a green thumb, but I believe as long as plants can sense you care for them, they will grow beautifully for you just like children smothered in love.
Science has recently understood what many of us regular folks always knew, that plants respond to music and to the human voice.
I am currently traveling for work, so I do not have my own pictures of my plants, but I often check on them and I know they are good in the hands of my mother, the master planter.
Thank you for reading.
Please check out Josephine Crispin’s story about a plant in her garden she was unsure of at first, but later grew to love.
And…
Debika Kumari writing about her mom’s adoration for the Tulsi plant and its importance in their lives.
Thank you, Dr Preeti and the other editors of Reciprocal for this amazing publication and the prompts.