Morningsun Herb Farm

Visitors to the nursery often comment that it must be wonderful to spend our hours and days in such a beautiful location working with plants.  To this I usually pause, ponder it for a moment, and agree with them.  Even on a day like yesterday, while I’m up on a ladder cutting loose all our shade covering because it’s sagging under the weight of  the ice that’s accumulated from a passing hail storm, it is in fact a beautiful place to live and work.  And that’s why we have stuck with it for over 15 years.

 

Like any business, there’s a lot more involved in owning and operating a nursery than basking in the wonderfulness of growing plants.  As with most business ventures, ours started with the desire to work with a product/service that we were passionate about.  And, maybe if we were lucky, we could make a living doing it.  Rose and I come from very different educational backgrounds.  Mine, engineering, Rose’s, horticulture.  As it turns out, this can be a blessing in disguise for business partners.  Because, the truth is, most businesses have a need for two types of passion; primary and secondary.  Rose, of course, possesses the primary type, all things to do with plants.  I would be the owner of the secondary type of passion, and that would be all things that enable Rose to fulfill her passion.

 

I do indeed have a passion for solving problems and providing solutions.  Maybe this isn’t so much a passion, but more an Obsession, a Compulsion, or maybe even a Disorder.  So, let’s just call it an OCD for short.  Yes, I like things orderly and in their proper place.  I like the front edge of our espresso machine perfectly parallel to the grout line of counter-top tiles upon which it sits.  I like our dining room table exactly centered in the dining room.  I make sure it’s straight by visually aligning the edge of it to the line defined by where the floor meets the wall.  Furthermore, any furniture that is up against a wall is square to the wall.  I measure it to make sure.  Go ahead and chuckle to yourself.  It’s OK.  It’s not painful to be me.  I actually feel special in a defective kind of way.  I require the toilet paper to feed from the top of the roll.  I hang my T-shirts in the closet and they are grouped by color.  Rose is not like this.  I think she is slightly disorganized on purpose just to keep me busy straightening things up after her.  But, I digress…

 

Most of the people I come in contact with during my working day, like Rose, are passionate about plants.  For some reason, I am not.  Don’t get me wrong.  I like plants.  But the only time you will see me digging in the garden is to repair a broken pipe or chase down a destructive gopher.  And don’t bet on catching me hanging around with the girls gushing about the latest variety of salvia.

 

I think about it and I try to analyze why I am not passionate about plants.  How can I be exposed to this potential source of passion on an almost daily basis for over 15 years and not become passionate about it?  What am I missing here?  Sure, we all have different passions, and plants just happen to not be one of mine, but why?  Is our passion potential dealt out to us like a poker hand at birth?  Should I actively be seeking out new things to be passionate about just to make sure I get my fair share?  If I’m passionate about more things will I live a happier and more fulfilling life?  Am I somehow passion impaired?

 

Let’s take an engineering approach to this.  It’s the only way I can even hope to make any sense of it.  Perhaps I can teach myself to be passionate about more things.  Plants are miraculous and wondrous.  Maybe a passion will start to grow inside me if I wonder harder.  I like lists, so here is my list of wonders;

 

- What came first, plants or animals?

- What is the difference between an animal and a plant?

- Do plants think?  Do they think about how yummy a ham sandwich would taste?  Do they think the sun is God?

- Do plants have feelings?

- Why are flowers different colors?  Are they competing with each other?

- What makes flowers open and close?  Do they have muscles?

- Why are some plants poisonous?  Do they hate us?

- Why do some plants taste good?  Do they want to be eaten?

- If there were no animals to eat plants, would they still taste good?

- Why do some plants have medicinal qualities?  Are they trying to help us?

- Why do some plants smell good, and others smell bad?

- Do plants wish there was better stuff on TV for plants to watch?

- Do plants wish they could start a band?

- Do plants prefer to hang around with other plants of their own kind?