Gardening Chaos
Member
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2022
- Messages
- 2
- Climate
- Temperate (all seasons)
This might be a bit of a ramble for an introduction and for that I apologize in advance
Growing up my father always had plants, orchids growing on palms, bromeliads of every shape and color with tons of little critters in them. He had every cycad you could imagine, beautiful huge ferns that I dare not touch for fear of harming their delicate nature, palms and plants people called palms but were not, he always made taxonomy jokes when I was a kid, along with normal dad jokes that I still giggle to myself today thinking about
Walking from the school bus to the house I’d pass the weeping bottlebrush which always seemed to be in flower, we had an enormous sweet bay laurel I used as a climbing tree but in retrospect maybe I shouldn’t have. We lived on an old citrus orchard and the neighbors had cows and horses so if some citrus fruits would fall and not be fit for us to use we’d stomp on them so they’d be in pieces to give to the cows and horses as a treat (with the rancher’s permission of course.) It was the best childhood a kid could have
At a young age my father instilled a love of both plants and the natural world deep in my soul. He taught me how to heal and nurture plants and animals back to health with compassion and a tender touch. To use a common cliché he taught me how to listen to what nature was saying
He also taught me to love and respect people despite our differences as it is our differences that makes the world special. We learn from each other, we listen to those who have experience but we can also use that knowledge as a springboard and adapt that information to fit our specific requirements, no two people life the same life or have the same experiences but we are all human and live on the same planet
This is where the story takes a sad turn
My father and I had a falling out over politics, I will not go into it as it is irrelevant. He is a veteran who served with the US Army and obtained the rank of a Major, he had strong feelings about specific things, I on the other hand felt differently. We did not speak for many years. It broke my heart but I was too headstrong to concede, another trait he instilled into me
This past year it was my mother’s birthday, I honestly didn’t know if she was alive or if my father was alive due to covid. My blue disk daisy was in bloom so I sent her a picture. She isn’t the most tech savvy so I had to email my dad to get her to check her email. Next thing I know my father and I are talking like we’d never stopped, mostly about plants and our cats. We started to mention we watched YouTube channels and in the next email we sent each other we each linked SelfSufficientMe to each other
We’d both been watching for years without the other knowing was also watching
I can’t say with certainty that the channel is what brought us back together as a family but it did a dang good job helping solidify the bond that was already there
For that I will be forever grateful
(Zone 8A, Georgia, USA: I grow everything I can get seeds for and my cat tries to help)
Growing up my father always had plants, orchids growing on palms, bromeliads of every shape and color with tons of little critters in them. He had every cycad you could imagine, beautiful huge ferns that I dare not touch for fear of harming their delicate nature, palms and plants people called palms but were not, he always made taxonomy jokes when I was a kid, along with normal dad jokes that I still giggle to myself today thinking about
Walking from the school bus to the house I’d pass the weeping bottlebrush which always seemed to be in flower, we had an enormous sweet bay laurel I used as a climbing tree but in retrospect maybe I shouldn’t have. We lived on an old citrus orchard and the neighbors had cows and horses so if some citrus fruits would fall and not be fit for us to use we’d stomp on them so they’d be in pieces to give to the cows and horses as a treat (with the rancher’s permission of course.) It was the best childhood a kid could have
At a young age my father instilled a love of both plants and the natural world deep in my soul. He taught me how to heal and nurture plants and animals back to health with compassion and a tender touch. To use a common cliché he taught me how to listen to what nature was saying
He also taught me to love and respect people despite our differences as it is our differences that makes the world special. We learn from each other, we listen to those who have experience but we can also use that knowledge as a springboard and adapt that information to fit our specific requirements, no two people life the same life or have the same experiences but we are all human and live on the same planet
This is where the story takes a sad turn
My father and I had a falling out over politics, I will not go into it as it is irrelevant. He is a veteran who served with the US Army and obtained the rank of a Major, he had strong feelings about specific things, I on the other hand felt differently. We did not speak for many years. It broke my heart but I was too headstrong to concede, another trait he instilled into me
This past year it was my mother’s birthday, I honestly didn’t know if she was alive or if my father was alive due to covid. My blue disk daisy was in bloom so I sent her a picture. She isn’t the most tech savvy so I had to email my dad to get her to check her email. Next thing I know my father and I are talking like we’d never stopped, mostly about plants and our cats. We started to mention we watched YouTube channels and in the next email we sent each other we each linked SelfSufficientMe to each other
We’d both been watching for years without the other knowing was also watching
I can’t say with certainty that the channel is what brought us back together as a family but it did a dang good job helping solidify the bond that was already there
For that I will be forever grateful
(Zone 8A, Georgia, USA: I grow everything I can get seeds for and my cat tries to help)
