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Heard a kid at the nursery ask why plants have 'old leaves' yesterday
I was at Armstrong Garden Center in Pasadena picking up some mulch and this little girl pointed at a dying leaf on a ficus and asked her mom why it was 'old.' It hit me how we used to just yank off any yellow or brown leaf without thinking. Now I look at those old leaves as the plant pulling nutrients back before letting go. Has anyone else changed how they see dying leaves over the years?
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ellis.felix2d ago
That's a nice observation, and it does fit a bigger pattern I've noticed over the years. So much of what we rush to "fix" in our gardens or homes is actually just nature doing its own thing. We pull the yellow leaf, we trim the brown tip, we deadhead every spent flower. But the plant knows what it's doing. That leaf is sending its last bit of energy back to the roots before letting go, and we just yank it away. It reminds me of how we treat getting older in general. We see a gray hair or a wrinkle as something to get rid of, something broken. But really, those are just signs of life moving through its natural stages. Sometimes the best thing is to just let things be and watch what happens.
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Hold on, wait. Did you say Armstrong Garden Center in Pasadena? The one on Arroyo Parkway? I stopped going there after a guy working the register tried to sell me a bag of "premium" potting soil that was basically just wet bark chips with bugs in it. That yellow leaf story is sweet and all, but now I'm just stuck on that store. That place has gone downhill, man. Last time I was there their succulents all had mealybugs.
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