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...
