LIFE’S LITTLE LESSONS

The Bamboo

This clumping bamboo will make an excellent garden plant and will not spread throughout the garden.

This variety of bamboo does not grow as a clump. Running varieties can be invasive and need to be controlled. The leaves have been damaged by the cold winter, but will recover in spring.

One of my favourite varieties now planted on the farm. It will spread as it is a running variety, but has plenty of room on the farm.

Hobby farming allows us to learn many of life’s simple lessons. Some sad, others expensive and when we look back many raise a laugh on recounting.

Lessons Of Plants And Animals

For this reason, bringing up children on a farm has great appeal to parents with a rural background. Children have a direct appreciation of nature, and one day these children will fondly recount their own childhood experiences.

In this section I wish to recount some of my observations about plants and animals, starting with the magnificent Bamboo.

My Bamboo Lesson

The one plant that comes to mind when looking for examples on how to approach life is the bamboo.

The bamboo is flexible and able to bend in the wind. It can absorb the blows life dishes out and almost always recovers. It shows humility in its appearance having simple plain flowers. It does not wish to attract attention to itself such as with the blossoms of brightly flowering plants. It is tough and ready to lend a hand to the weak and frail making excellent walking sticks.

A True Survivor Passing Away With Grace

Should excessive force be applied to the bamboo it may snap, but soon recovers by sending up shoots from its rhizomes firmly embedded in the earth, unlike trees that are uprooted in the wind, the bamboo is a true survivor.

The bamboo is also most generous, being prepared to lend canes for buildings, garden stakes, flooring and of course it can provide food. It also knows how to mind its own business, preferring to stick with its own kind in a clump. It will happily survive tough times once established, and it is also prefers to conceal its own secrets within its dark interior.

The most important lesson however, is displayed by its inherent wisdom. The clump will die after flowering and so the bamboo not only knows how to live, it also knows when to die!