Complain or Create? — The Art of Making the best of what you’ve got!
Just as there is happiness in seeing a plant flower, there is sadness in seeing a plant wither away.
Especially if you’ve seen what the plant goes through. Oh no, GROW THROUGH not-so-ideal circumstances, and then you see it all falling apart.
Such was my emotion when I witnessed the Oleander plant on my terrace. When I got it from an exhibition, I didn’t have high hopes for the plant. I didn’t want it to grow much as well. So I just put the sapling in a broken stainless steel pot and put it in a corner. The terrace garden is a cumulation of vegetables, flowering plants, and crotons. There are flowers and vegetables every day. Though they were few, they still brought smiles.
And this Oleander, being in a corner, started flowering within a week of coming in. Ever since, there would always be a bunch of flowers every single day, from almost every corner of the plant. As it grew up in a small pot, there wasn’t much space for the roots to propagate, so without much feasibility for development in terms of the breadth of the plant, this started growing longitudinally.
This routine continued, and it became a part of the terrace, a part that is neither appreciated nor ignored. Every day this plant flowers, and we sometimes take it, but the majority of the time, it just adds to the aesthetics of the terrace, just like every other flower.
One fine day, we decided to jump on a vacation! This was a short 3-day trip to a southern state, and we were about to start at 5 a.m. So, in order to protect the plants because there would be no one to water them, we overfilled each of the garden bags and pots and bid them farewell with a “Good Luck plants, stay alive until we return.”
I have no idea if the peak of the summer is to blame or the poor planning from our side; within 3 days, every plant succumbed to heat and improper water supply except the Oleander. It was at that time that I realized this plant was a fighter!
But, don’t we all know? Gardening isn’t a “let me Give Up” kind of hobby. So I bought more sets of seeds and replanted the whole terrace garden again, leaving just the corner spot of the Oleander untouched. But this time, it was unfortunate for every seed purchased. Despite taking more than three weeks, none of the plants bloomed, and they eventually withered. This cycle of planting, replanting, and managing continued for so many cycles until recently, when we got a good set of seeds and now have a good combo of different varieties.
And now, as I stare at the corner, I see the most daring fighter start withering away. It has lost most of its leaves; the ones that were once as sharp as a blade now looks like a sheet of paper, and the boldness of the green stem has now turned as pale as if it were dying with blood drained from itself. The whole view of it was heartbreaking. The plant that once stood up to not being watered, to thunderstorms and rains that flooded almost the entire garden, to heatwaves, is now here, looking as if it’s in its final days.
And that’s when I looked down and noticed that, in the past 3 years, it has stood and nurtured itself in the same stainless steel pot that it was first planted in. The lack of rejuvenation in the plant would most likely be because of a lack of space for its roots. And that is when my mother remarked,
“The plant has thrived, fought, and has almost spent 3 years in that small pot. And still is flowering consistently”
That is when it stuck. How much pain or craving would that small plant have gone through just to spread its roots a little further?
How many days would it have thought to give up but still decided to continue flowering for some reason?
How long has it been since the plant wished for nothing more than more space on the ground to bloom?
How would it be? How would it feel? When you know you are superior, you have more potential and more strength than every other plant that died.
How would it feel to be held captive within a small, extremely small pot while the whole world has a space that is vastly stretched and offers unlimited nourishment?
That’s when I realized the world isn’t fair to everyone. And that can either be a reason to wither or a burning desire to bloom better than the rest.
What you choose is totally up to you. And at this moment, the plant chose: “Bloom where you are planted.”
And that is a beauty of its own.
As I had my moment of realization, I went closer to the plant, hugged it a bit, and I literally felt it hugging me back with its little branches. That’s when I promised to give the plant more ground space to let it feel the excitement of the wide open world.
