Lieve Toni

Since I found the love for plants and nature, I am looking forward for the time I can work in my garden. I know there are other chores as well but I enjoy working in the garden the most. The biggest work in the garden is cleaning the garden from weeds. I have to pull its root out the ground carefully because it also grows in the grass. So I have to ensure that I won’t pull the grass instead.

I spray the garden twice during dry season. So during rainy season like now I have more time to take away dry and branch or leaves and weeds. I heard several times that plants will grow well if you talk to them. When I heard it, I just laughed. It was so silly. Talk to your dog or cat is ok because they know whether you are happy or angry but what could a plant do? They just grow or don’t. That’s what I thought


Sometimes it’s for me a speculation when I buy a plant. I am not an expert in this field. I can not foresee whether a plant is healthy or not. I just learn by doing. Once I bought a flower plant. It has small purple and white flowers and has also fragrance. Lieve Toni is the name. At least that’s the name I got from the vendor. I haven’t heard this name before but I can not check the truth either. What a pity that a lot of people don’t know names of plants they have in their garden or house and sometimes even the vendor doesn't know the name of the plant they sell. So if you know that this name is not correct please let me know.

The plant looked good and the vendor said that it didn’t need a lot of attention. Just never forget to give it water. I planted it beside the window of our bedroom near to Jasmine flowers. I like to smell its nice fragrance every morning I open the window.

The first days the plant still looked ok and I gave it water regularly. But there were days I couldn’t spend time in my garden and the worst that I forgot to give water to the plants, especially this Lieve Toni. After a couple of days Lieve Toni began to dry. The leaves were falling out. I gave more attention to it, took wild grass around it and never forget to give it water again. But I didn’t see a change. There was a day that I thought “I’d better pull it out the ground and throw away”.

Suddenly I remember that you can talk to plants. It was still silly for me but why not? It doesn’t cost any cent. You just need several seconds. The only risk you take is that your neighbor would look surprised if he or she sees you talking to plants. That’s the bad thing and the good thing is that I don’t have any neighbors (yet). So I started to talk to Lieve Toni. I said, “Dear plant, I’ve seen your beautiful small white and purple flowers and smelled your fragrance. You were a nice plant. Please grow again. I know you can make it”. I did it several days and of course kept giving it water as well.

Every morning I open the window in my room, I breathe the fresh morning air and look around at plants and flowers in the garden. One morning I looked at Lieve Toni. It looked different. There were new leaves on its branch. It grows again! I said spontaneously “How happy I am to see you growing again. You did it!” My husband heard it as well but he got used to.

Although I can’t sing, I like to listen to music and songs especially the ones with good text. Often you can apply the text into your daily life. But I am happy that I didn’t apply the famous song from the film Notting Hill to this plant. Yes, you know it, the song is You Say It Best When You Say Nothing At All.

If a plant needs attention and encouragement, do you know how much people need it? If such encouragement can change a life of a plant, can you imagine how it works at people?