By Kausthubha Yaratha My memories of India are distinctly olfactory. Nothing can quite compare to the musky smell of the earth after a rain softens the hard, cracked dirt. The way that the air can be dry and sharp one second and, the next second, the breeze gets heavy as rain clouds roll in over the horizon. With the first crack of thunder and sheet of rain, you are surrounded by the smell of fresh earth. It’s an overwhelming experience, refreshing and cleansing. The highligh

by Faiha Khan Would you rub a prickly plant all over your face? Well, here’s why you should! I still remember the shock of watching my aunt rip off a large leaf of her beautiful house plant. I was eight years old and visiting her house in New Jersey. The first thing that caught my eye when I walked in was this pointy, inhospitable-looking plant in the living room. I was immediately intrigued. What was this plant that looked as though it was trying to keep anything that could

by Brittany This is Leo (middle). He’s a weiner dog that likes to eat my dad’s pepper plants. I wasn’t there when Leo first tried my dad’s peppers, but my sister said Dad was even angrier than the time we flooded the house ( a story for another time). My dad, the Pepper Lover, loves his peppers (belonging to the genus, Capsium). He likes them really hot but still enjoyable enough to eat. Usually he buys imported peppers from India or Mexico because he can never find any ones

by Charles W. Bier I don’t know when I first began to really know trees. As a youngster, I was literally a snake-in-my-pocket sort of kid. Yeah, could not get enough snakes in my life. I was blooming as a broader young naturalist in my later elementary years, and I do remember leading a walk for a small group of people on some open land near where I grew up north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. On that walk I remember being asked the identity of a smooth, light grey barked tr

by Rachelle the Drunk Phytologist Looking back, my whole childhood was a plant and nature love story, complete with a 20 acre playground. Growing up on a show rabbit farm in Northeastern Indiana allowed me to explore, dream, and get dirty. I made little moats in the mud of my mom's garden to water her bedding plants, picked fruits out of our orchard, and jumped into our pond on a hot day to gather pond weed and algae for an impromptu Loch Ness monster costume. As a nerdy kid

by Isabel Acevedo One of my earliest memories of my Ama, my mother’s mother, is of her wrist: impossibly smooth skin always enclosed by a solid jade bracelet. The simple stone bangle would shine gently, a sea of emerald and pale turquoise gazing out at me from its glassy surface. I recall asking my mother why Ama never took it off, and she said that Ama had worn it so long that her hand had grown and it wouldn’t come off anymore; she could have it broken off, but she didn’t w

by Megan Cate Dandelions are technically an invasive weed. Many think they are lawn nuisances and dedicate the spring and summer to killing them in any way possible. While dandelions may die and stay out of your lawn, there is usually one straggler whose bud peeks its way up in a driveway crack or other remote location. When my sister, Allison, and I were young (under 4 years old), we spent hours outside our rural home in Capac, Michigan. One of our fondest memories is of our

by Tony Chang My mom is an incredible plant caretaker—she just knows how to make things grow. She has the ability to pick plants from the wilds of the forest and somehow tame them to flourish as house plants. When my parents divorced, I was five years old. The sudden shift from two parents to one was jolting. I lived with my dad and only saw my mom once every weekend. That shift made me cherish the moments I could spend with my mother. Typically, when we saw each other we wou

by Bonnie McGill I’m telling you he was throwing sticks at me and wouldn’t stop. So I did what any little sister would do when verbal communication fails to bring about a change in your older brother’s behavior: give them a little shove. That’ll get their attention. And it sure did. It was August 1995, think President (Bill) Clinton, Toy Story and Garth Brooks. I was 11 and my brother, Tim, was 13. (The photos at left were taken in ~1987 and 2016.) We had been climbing trees

by Jessya Both of my grandmothers lived with me growing up. My parents were immigrants and soon after they established themselves they arranged to bring their parents over to the US. They immigrated from the Soviet Union, and for a period of time we had all four grandparents under our roof. Both of my grandmothers loved plants. They nurtured them. They'd teach me which leaves to pluck out of the fields outside my school to treat warts, and which berries to eat, and where the

by Mallika Nocco My parents became two opposite people every time we traveled to Bangalore, both trying to cram everything they missed about India into one month. They seemed to revert back into their adolescent selves, each staying with a set of grandparents three blocks away from each other, my father eating six meals a day to keep both his father and his mother-in-law happy. He would pick me up from my maternal grandparents’ house and take me in an auto-rickshaw to Gandhi