Seeing things grow is akin to a type of natural medicine for me. That is, if I plant something and I see it grow into what I know it should grow into, plus I get the added benefit of eating what I grew, I personally gain from it as much, if not more, than "medicine". What I mean by this is simply that I find there to be "healing" in the mere act of perceiving things grow. This growth can symbolize various things, but to me, it symbolizes the time I invested into that plant or thing. Today, I want to write about a journey that took me four months. It took me four months to grow gooseberries from seed to fruit. I want to share with you this journey and what I gain from it. I share this with you with the hope that (i) it will instill in you the same desire to heal by growth, and (ii) that you might inadvertently gain from my growth as well.

Cape Gooseberries (Physalis peruviana)

Cape Gooseberries, goldenberries, or whatever name you might use for this berry, they are surely one of those unique fruits that few people in the world have tried. Not really native to South Africa or the Cape region, even if it is in the name, it has become accustomed to our weather and ground conditions. It is actually a "weed" in my garden as seedlings pop up everywhere. I do not have to store seeds anymore as I only have to save the seedlings that pop up everywhere. And this is exactly what I did for this post.

Biting into four months: A plant ripened fruit

To say this post took me four months is half true and half false. The growing of the plant from seed to me picking that fruit took four months. I am writing this post now, so it took four months and not four months. Philosophy! In any case, I digress. The seeds are either blown from the dried fruit "carcasses" in my garden or from my compost that gets "infested" by these fruits. I saw some of the seedlings pop up and decided to save them. I started them in mid-September. They sprout within a couple of days here where I live in the summer/spring heat. So theoretically I started them begin September. I picked the first fruit on the 10th of January this year. Four months give or take. How sweet did the fruit taste!

I do not want to write about the health aspect of these fruits now. Maybe I have already in another post. What I want to write about is the idea of finding vitality for yourself in the growth of plants. I use as my explicit or concrete example the growth of my gooseberries. Please read on if you want to read about what this growth symbolizes to me. Maybe it resonates with you and maybe you might find something of worth buried in my words.

Plant Growth as Natural Medicine

In a recent comment I made to someone else, I wrote that:

for me, the true medicine comes from being in touch with nature and seeing things grow and knowing where your food comes from.

These words have become my life's philosophy in some sense. Not everyone will agree, and not everyone will gain value from the sentiment. But isn't that how "normal medicine" also works? It is not for everyone.

The start of a plant's life is a small seedling sticking out from the ground, almost like small hands sticking themselves out towards the sun. Utterly vulnerable, they will not always survive. Enter the gardener. I dig the small roots up and plant them in a small cup filled with compost (essentially the dead material of the same plant!).

Every morning I visit this seedling (and the others) and give it a small amount of water.

Every morning I see the growth in the plant.

Every morning I look for pests or worms or other "weeds" that will also take root in the mixture.

You see where I am going with this: the growth (or the maintenance of the growth) becomes a daily and spiritual routine. It becomes a part of you and your way of living. If you skip a day it feels like something is missing, it feels like you are missing an integral part of yourself. (There can be some negative aspects to this, but I think the pros outweigh the cons.)

And this is why I think that "growth" can be a kind of natural medicine. Not necessarily to "heal" something that is "wrong/broken/sick" but to maintain health and vitality.

Our minds are so used to medicine as something you take when you are sick, that is, medicine helps when there is something wrong. Health is then a purely negative concept: the absence of xyz (sickness) is seen as healthy. But this, to me, is a very "poor" and "insufficient" way of looking at health. If we can see health as growth, in a very philosophical or metaphorical sense, I think that we might gain some insight in how "poor" our current lives are.

Again, this is not for everyone, some might not find it worth a second thought, but I want to explore this idea further. (Maybe a little in this post, but in other future posts as well.)

Nourishing Yourself with Growth

This is a little play on words. Growth here can mean spiritual or personal growth or the growth in the form of fruit. If you grow your own food, you can in some sense nourish yourself with spiritual growth and physical growth! I waited four months for the first fruit on my gooseberry plant. I picked that fruit and the others on the other much older plants. Every morning I visited the plants to see their growth. With their growth, I grew. That is because when I water them I can reflect on things. It is a quiet moment in which I can reflect without the worries of work or studies. In these short moments, I can feel my own growth. I see the green new growth, but I also see my own branches grow.

A bowl of nourishment: Gooseberries and honey, nuts and yogurt

Growing your own food is rewarding in so many aspects. It is scary to realize how reliant we are on others for our nourishment. The bowl of food is full of ingredients I have no idea how it got made. Take the yogurt. What milk did they use? How were the cows treated? I have no idea. I can only trust, but that trust is not good enough. But having a cow in my backyard is also not an option. Not eating the yogurt is the ultimate option, or finding a better source. But, this post is not about the yogurt, but the things you can actually have control over. The gooseberries are picked at peak ripeness (or when the plant actually wants me to eat the fruit so I can distribute its seeds - but this is also an idea for a future post!).

The Growth Timelapse (of Sorts)

Here I share with you the growth timelapse. It is always fun to see how plants grow (for me):

Date taken: 2021.09.16

Date taken: 2021.10.02

Date taken: 2021.10.23

Date taken: 2021.10.29

Date taken: 2021.12.03

And then the photographs at the start of this post were taken on the 10th of January 2022.

Post Scriptum

This post is already too long. Thank you for reading, if you read this far! It took me a couple of hours to write, but the plants grew four months. How crazy! All of the photographs were taken with either a Nikon D300 or an iPhone. The musings are my own, unless one takes the growth of the plants as the original author!

Jokes aside, I hope you gained something from this post and that it means something to you. Or that you can implement it in your life. I want to explore some of the ideas in more depth, as they are valuable to me and maybe you can find value in them. For now, please enjoy the musings about growth and gooseberries.