Nursery

I remember being 3 and being sent to nursery school. First day, second day, third day, and who knows until when, I'd cry whenever my dearly-departed AE would leave me in the classroom at the care of my teachers. Being the one who took care of all of us siblings, AE told me that I was the one who cried the loudest and would look out from the window to make sure I see a glimpse of her and she has not left me. For some reasons, I remembered this scene while doing "nursery" with the seeds. 

When the seeds in the germination bed started to sprout with life, we placed them in more solid ground. Again, egg trays seem to be the fashionable thing so we filled them with vermicast, the poop of African night crawler earthworms that become soil-like. 

The lettuces (frillice, rapid, lolo rosa, romaine, and  arugula) look real cute and extremely delicate. I must have killed at least two in the transplanting of these centimeter-long sprouts to their new beds.

After a while, though, some started to wilt. They didn't look like they liked their new beddings. And true enough, after a few more days (weeks) on the egg trays, the little peeking green that they used to be, disappeared. 

It's a saddening sight. I tried to let everything stay longer in hopes that the little life I see in them would mature into at least a leaf. Some did, but most simply....didn't. Sad.

Like me crying, maybe they were shaken with the new environment. Plants get stressed, too. I should have been more sensitive in handling them, and hear them when they were crying. But I didn't. I had high hopes that they'll survive and wasn't even bothered that their delicate status required more of my patience and time. 

AE knew that, so she stayed longer and would look back at her iyakin three-year-old alaga through the window until my attention was more on the teacher than her. I miss her, it's her 8th death anniversary today. Who knew she has been teaching me farming lessons way back in nursery school. The Farmer knew. And that's why I had to be reminded of that.