A Short Reflection on Plants and Me

 

                                                             Let's Grow Some Rice

A Short Reflection on Plants and Me

Since childhood, I have always felt an affinity with plants, trees, and the forest itself. In primary school, gardening was part of our curriculum, and I still remember the earthy scent of soil and cow manure as we spread it along the furrows of our little vegetable plots. Even then, something in me recognized the joy of working with the earth.

At home, around the age of four or five, I would wander to a neighbour’s house where all kinds of garden plants and fruit trees thrived. I spent hours helping the women of the house pot plants, turn compost, and care for seedlings—not out of duty, but simply out of love. By then, there was hardly a local plant or tree I didn’t recognize, though I never imagined it meant anything.

As I grew older, this connection expanded into wider fields and deeper forests: the foothill lands of Sri Lovely Organic Farm in Sik, Kedah, and later the vast green fields of Green Gulch Farm in California. There, I learned to grow lettuces of every kind, spinach, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, and to care for “the Garden,” lovingly tended by Wendy Johnson. Composting, weeding, nurturing acres of crops—these became a form of meditation and devotion.

Even today, I still love to lay my hands, even my face, against the bark of old trees, to feel their textures, inhale their scent, and listen to their silent stories. The old Angsana trees of my childhood, their golden blossoms carpeting the road to school, remain etched in my memory seventy years later. They fed my artistic awe long before I knew what art truly was.

Perhaps this is why it pains me to witness the destruction of forests worldwide, cleared for commercial crops like palm oil. This, to me, is one of humanity’s quiet tragedies—an injury that will one day return to us in ways we may not be prepared to face.

Yet even in sorrow, I feel blessed. Plants have been among my earliest teachers, companions, and inspirations. They have shaped my hands, my senses, my creativity, and perhaps even my soul.

#naturelove #plantwisdom #childhoodmemories #forestheart #greenconnection #earthstories