Feeding a friendship

If you are an avid Malaysian gardener, I’m quite sure you’d have bought yourself a copy of Prof Francis Ng’s latest book, Tropical Horticulture & Gardening. Such a fantastic book (but I’ll leave the raving for another day…)!

Since Prof Ng’s blog was printed in his Preface, I decided to check it out. The first (and most recent) post hit me like a slap in the face. He was talking about some chemical that is applied to soil, to get rid of all bugs especially earthworms. Earthworms? Surely this can’t be right?

In an earlier post, he mentioned how one of his potted plants didn’t seem to be thriving, so he had it dug out only to find lots of earthworms wriggling away. He had the worms thrown out, the soil replaced and now the plant is in full bloom.

That got me all confused and disturbed. Surely every gardener knows that earthworms are our friends? We don’t call them friends of the earth for nothing…so why is the good Professor treating them like enemies??

Unable to get it off my mind, I googled the good man until I found his email address and wrote to him to express how I disturbed I felt about his repulsion for earthworms.  I even catch earthworms to put into my pots, I said. I use a lot of mulch too, but since he said mulch doesn’t work as well in the tropics, should I gather all my mulch up and toss them into my compost pile or make a bonfire out of them?

Prof Ng was quick to reply.

Every garden works differently, he said in his email, and I need not replace my gardening system if it works for me. Earthworms don’t work for him because he doesn’t mulch, so the earthworms tend to eat his plant roots instead. Since there is a lot of mulch in my garden, my well-fed earthworms will happily leave my plants alone.

That’s a relief indeed…but it also got me thinking. If earthworms, the friends of the earth, can turn into foes, what of our human friends? Will they, too, turn their back when they run out of resources? What does it take to keep a friendship alive?

Perhaps friendships need ‘mulching’ too, in the form of the calls, the occasional yum-cha, emails, the text messages? Without these ‘mulch’, a friendship, like earthworms, has nothing to fall back upon.  The result: a friendship, like a starving earthworm, eats away at itself, ending the relationship prematurely.

The thing is, not every friend needs the same amount of ‘mulch’. Some seem to be happy with the very occasional email, some need more constant contact, still others need heavy reassurance. 

The reverse works too; how much of ‘mulch’ do we demand from our friends? Are we the ravenous type of earthworm or the kind that gets by with sparing amounts of ‘mulch’?

I lost a friend recently when our small argument escalated into something larger than life- and now she refuses to have anything to do with me despite my attempts to make up. It grieved me greatly, but I guess I haven’t given this ‘earthworm’ enough mulch if a small conflict is enough to turn her into a foe.

I don’t know how to salvage this friendship except to give it time. Just like repotting a plant, I’m giving it some breathing space – for now. Hopefully I’ll be able to befriend this earthworm again, when she realises that there is so much mulch hidden away in the corners of her heart...

Love-Hate Relationships

Nature is immensely beautiful in every way- even bugs, bees, snakes, lizards or what we girls call the creepy crawlies have perfect shape, form and colour that suit their lifestyles. If we can just take a closer look at the tiny life forms in a garden, we will be amazed at the diversity and beauty of every living being, whether they are our plants’ friends or foes.

I snapped these little grasshoppers early one morning while watering the plants. Their uniformed formation made them look like they were in some kind of conference, discussing some important hopper matters or making some devious plans to take over the world a.k.a my garden.

Wait a minute- did you say my ‘garden’?

Darn, but of course- these pretty little long-legged hoppers will soon be all over my plants, chomping on everything and leaving holes everywhere! Yikes and double yikes...but I didn’t have the heart to catch or kill them all.

Strangely enough, I never have the same qualms when I see caterpillars. How I hate them- they eat ravenously, sometimes rendering an entire lime tree bald in just days or making huge holes in other plants. Not only that, they make me itch- just a slight brush against these little hairy fellas gives me rashes that lasts for days.

The problem is that caterpillars turn into butterflies. Big, beautiful creations with short lifespans and even shorter reproductive periods. With destructive caterpillars as their young, few of them ever makes it out of my garden alive as I snip every caterpillar dead every time I see one.

Such is the nature of a love-hate relationship, I guess...when you hate something or someone yet love this thing or person just as deeply. How can one fully describe or understand the contrasting emotions?

Yet in retrospect, aren’t many aspects of life love-hate relationships?

Marriages or relationships are perhaps the best examples: we may love our partners yet hate certain aspects of his/her personality; eg he/she makes great curry but never cleans up afterwards; he/she is nice to travel but tends to shop too much; he/she takes care of you well but is so possessive and domineering that you’ve lost all your friends.

Then there are the bosses that you love and hate at the same time. You love him/her for giving you your job, but hates the way he never stands up for you when anything goes wrong. How about bosses who give you fat pay-cheques, yet put you down publicly as a pathetic opportunist who will grovel for some extra dough?

Almost every family with a domestic maid will agree that their relationship with their maids is at best, love-hate. You may love her cooking or dependability, but hates the way she misplaces (or worse, breaks) things or wastes water or electricity. Some women resent the way the maid appears to have total control over their households, yet love them for freeing their minds and time to do more important things like holding a high-paying job.

What about best friends, whom we love with our heart but hate the fact that they are smarter, prettier, brighter or more popular?

And children- we love them and often sacrifice our lives for their welfare; but deep down, doesn’t every parent mourn their lost youth, freedom and identity? What’s worse is when the children turn out wrong; for instance, if they are born with congenital problems or turn into delinquents or drug addicts. They may not admit it even with their dying breath, but deep down, have they ever wished they never had this child?

Yes, love-hate relationships are painful. The easiest, although not the best, way to resolve them are to decide which is more dominant- the love or the hate.

Grasshoppers: I can live with them, because they seem to disappear almost as soon as they appear. So the damage caused is minimal. Love still prevails.

Caterpillars: No way; may God forgive me for not allowing you to turn into butterflies. I wish I had the patience to wait, but what you are doing to my plants makes me loathe you too much. Sayonara...

Simple? Not really.

The thing is, not every case is so clear-cut. Like the wife who sticks with an abusive or straying husband. What makes her stay despite the way he’s hurting her? Could it be that she decides her love overcomes her hate? It has been said that the deeper the hate, the deeper the love too, because only those you really love can hurt you and make you hate them.

How about unmarried mothers who decide to suffer a lifetime of public scorn and ridicule to have their child out of wedlock? And doctors who continue to care for the ill and dying in overcrowded public hospitals despite sacrificing personal and family time. Love rules here too.

What then, if I (and other gardeners around the world) could practise more love for caterpillars, surely there’ll be more butterflies in the world (and my garden)?

If we could all tip the love-hate equation towards a little more love, would that make the world a better place? Suddenly I feel like breaking into a MJ song...

The Definition of Passion

Maybe I talk (or write too much) or maybe the lines on my face are beginning to show (wisdom comes with age apparently), but over the recent years, more people are asking me about how they can find passion for life. How do we know this intense enthusiasm I’m feeling right now is not a flash in the pan, they ask.

I used to wonder about that too. How exactly can passion be defined? I’ve heard of people who tell me they are passionate about their job, certain causes, a particular hobby or life pursuit. But how exactly do we pin it down?

Someone I interviewed recently said that you’ll know it’s passion when you think about doing it (your passion) for the next 5,10, 15, 20 years and you still feel OK about it, maybe even look forward to it.

Someone else said it’s passion when you’re willing to do it even if you don’t get paid. I find this disconcerting - because money always complicates matters. Can you pay someone to stay passionate about something for a long time? It’s a grey line, because it depends on how much you’re willing to fork out. My guess is some people may even sell their souls if the price was right.

In my exclusive interview with squash queen Nicol David recently, we talked about squash, on the courts and off. Although I’m no squash fan, I was totally overwhelmed by how passionate Nicol is about her game, to the extent of giving up university to pursue a life perfecting her passion.  

I was specifically told by my editor to ‘find out what the real Nicol is like’. Keep squash minimal. Ask what she likes apart from squash.

I tried. We talked about all kinds of things, but somehow everything always came back to squash. Her life choice: squash. Her principles: squash. Her destiny: squash. Her friends: squash. Her family: squash. The only thing that kept them all intertwined is the hard work she put into it- the many hours, the dedication, the absolute commitment.

A few days after the interview, reports of her winning the KL Open for the umphteen time appeared in the papers. She’d suffered a small injury, but she brushed it off as ‘no biggie’. How many injuries had she suffered and how many times had she brushed them off and sloughed on over her entire career?

That was when I realized the true definition of passion. Sacrifice. Dedication. Pain.

How many times had I scratched my arms, face and legs while gardening? How about the times when my body is aching after an entire day of shoveling and digging, yet I still whisper to myself ‘just one last one’ as I tackled another patch?

How about the many bricks that fell on my toes, causing internal bleeding that takes a year to heal and the almost endless ant bites? Not to mention the sunburn, perpetual tan and premature skin ageing.

When a certain pleasure is so immense it causes pain, it would have crossed into the definition of passion.

Carrying hundreds of tonnes of bricks, rocks, sand and soil is no less painful than mountain-climbing, diving, marathon-running or even creating graphic design or chocolate cakes to die for. Somehow somewhere physical pain is always involved, otherwise you won’t see the same person doing it for one decade, two and for a lifetime.

It makes you think twice the next time someone tells you they’re ‘really passionate’ about something, doesn’t it?

To know whether they really mean it, why not ask them to prove it? Like proud warriors in a battle, people who are really passionate about something will have scars to show for it. These scars may be physical, emotional, even mental- but they’re still at it (their passion), day after day, year after year.

So how do you find your passion in life then? Ask yourself : Am I willing to endure pain and suffering to do this? If you had answered yes, then congratulations.

If not, continue searching and you will find it. Passion is what you're willing to (metaphorically) die for. Once you find it, your life will be so rich there will be no turning back, scars and all.

Plant Talk or Inner Talk?

This is my first post so I shall first declare that I don't intend to write about digging, planting, sowing, fertilisers or making compost. Yes, this is a blog about gardening alright, but it's not about how to garden. I'm sure there must be thousands other blogs that tell you how to plant stuff, but chances are you won't find it here.

What I found when I'm in the garden is that my mind goes into overdrive. Every day I learn something new- mushrooms that pop up in the thousands after the rain dies in the thousands too when the scorching sun comes up; most flowers wither the same day they bloom; not all seeds are alike; life is indeed a miracle... because it all starts from one tiny seed.

Everything in the garden is a life lesson by itself. Gardening teaches many life values not found in the best of encyclopedias or the internet- you just have to dig your fingers into the earth to find out.

My sincere hope is that everyone who passes through this blog will look at plants and planting differently after reading the posts. Plants may not speak to us in a language we understand but they interact with us on a different level, one so subconscious that we need to go deep down our inner selves to 'hear' what is being said.

So to borrow Nike's famed line- Just Do It- let's just get our trowels and spades to work in this journey of self-discovery. Just dig it, people, you'll never know what you'll find!