Plant Servitude
By
Paula Szilard
Much has been written about how we can enrich our lives by becoming passionately involved in a cause or something greater than ourselves. It seems to elevate us above the humdrum and give new meaning to our lives. Some say that people who are passionately involved in some activity they care a about seem so much more interesting than people who are just going about their daily routines. Jobs can’t necessarily be relied on to provide this kind of satisfaction.
Those of us who find plants fascinating and have committed our recreational lives to growing as many as we can and learning as much as we can about them get tremendous satisfaction from doing this. I have known only a handful of people who were able to do this in their careers. The rest of us had to do this recreationally or in retirement.
We are all in some type of servitude. Some of us are in servitude to our jobs, others to a cause or to money. Though money, while important, is not the satisfaction most of us seek. Some of us are in servitude to animals, though most of us are loathe to admit this. I think of the animal rescue people who drove from New Mexico to Colorado Springs to bring my sister a dog and came back again a week later to pick him up when the animal was unable to adjust. My husband takes care of our Persian cats and he gets a lot of enjoyment from little displays of feline affection, though few and far between.
Then there are those of us who go through life in the servitude of plants. We are so deeply involved in growing them, caring for them and learning about them that they are a major source of satisfaction in our lives. Sometimes we don’t even realize the extent of our involvement. There was a time in our country’s history when our very existence depended on good plant servitude. If you didn’t take care of your plants, i.e. crops, then they didn’t take care of you and your family night not survive. Ditto for the animals.
Our founding fathers were farmers and plant nerds. Thomas Jefferson painstakingly recorded all the plants he grew and how well they did in his journals. He was forever on the lockout for crops that would perform well in our new agrarian nation. He was said to have smuggled tomato seeds out of France when tomatoes were still a rarity in this country. While visiting England, he and John Adams took great pleasure in visiting gardens.
So what do we get out of all of this besides “doing what we enjoy doing?” Well, the list is long! Gardening is good for us, both for the body and the spirit. Some even consider it a form of meditation. We can surround ourselves by beauty, indoors and out. Plants contribute to the health of our environment by cleaning our air, in our homes and outdoors. We harvest absolutely delicious and nourishing fresh organic fruits and vegetables for very little input—maybe a little compost, some organic fertilizer, a few seeds and plants, plus our own labor. We can share our harvest with others and encourage them to garden as well. We remain intellectually curious because we continue to learn throughout our lifetime. We stay informed and we stay in touch with nature. You get the idea! The more we invest, the more we get back. And the more we take care of our plants, the better they take care of us---and our planet!
About the author:
Currently Paula is plant servant to 11 clivias, 8 citruses, 6 edible figs, 10 hibiscuses, 18 gasterias, 11 crowns of thorns, 2 oleanders, 6 angels trumpets, roughly 60 epiphytic cacti, mostly epiphyllums, as well as Christmas and Easter cacti, about 30 scented pelargoniums and an odd assortment of miscellaneous tropical plants. In addition she tends a sizeable vegetable garden and has converted her front lawn into an edible landscape.