What's So Special About Plants
I know we all love plants for their spectacular flowers. But there is something else, more subtle, that warrants out attention. I am talking about new flushes of leaf growth.
Often, new leaves are red, as is the case with roses and, most noticeably, with Photinia. But to see a new foliar flush on any plant is exciting.
I have been nursing an etrog or citron seedling (Citrus medica) for nearly a year and, just now, it produced a new flush of growth that has provided me with a sensation of incomparable joy.
There is nothing that takes your breath away more than growth. Be it on a plant or in a human being. Perhaps that is why I work at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center. People come in desperate and leave renewed. Some stay sober and some do not but at least during the time they spend in rehab demonstrable growth takes place. Addicts are people who have too much love for the world into which they are born. Like plants, they give and give and give, yet receive little, if anything, in return. Unlike plants, however, addicts cannot cope with getting little in return for their limitless love and turn to an alien substance as a vessel that somehow, albeit dangerously, contains their passion.
