Five Life Lessons from Plant Parenthood

I had to learn to love plants before I could learn to love myself.

My school teachers must have hated me. I was nearly impossible to teach if I couldn’t appreciate the practical value of what I was learning. For subjects like chemistry and physics, this was simple enough to overcome. Calculus, on the other hand, only made sense when I was in college.

One of the things that continued to elude me well into my mid twenties was plant parenthood. When I was in school, all I was taught was that plants need water, sunlight, carbon dioxide and nutrients, whatever that meant. When I was younger, I had the odd cactus and succulent, but I could never for the life of me figure out what I was doing wrong. I gave it water. I gave it sunlight. It had carbon dioxide. I’m sure there was nutrients in the soil. Why did plants keep dying on me?

At the height of the pandemic, our neighbourhood council gave us a pack of vegetable seeds for reasons that I have yet to figure out. I mean, I know that it was part of their “grow your own food” initiative, but considering that my entire neighbourhood comprised of high-rise apartment buildings, I’m not sure how much success we were expected to get. Growing enough vegetables to sustain yourself requires a hell of a lot of space and sunlight that apartments aren’t exactly famous for providing.

I planted those seeds anyway, mostly because I was unemployed and bored. By the time they were large enough to qualify as micro-greens, I harvested them and threw them into the pot with my instant ramen. I guess I did grow my own food, but there’s no way it would actually sustain me.

Inspired by how much I was fussing over a couple of seeds, my mother decided to bring home our first houseplant in so many years. In the last year, our collection has multiplied and frankly, I couldn’t be more grateful. Instead of continuing to fumble through life with a shaky understanding of my own worth, I was finally given a practical demonstration.

Without further ado, here are 5 important lessons that I learnt from plant parenthood.

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