Plant Love Stories: Submissions

A Classic Love Triangle: a Dad, a Dog, and Some Peppers

Feb 14, 2019
4 min

A Classic Love Triangle: a Dad, a Dog, and Some Peppers

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

玉 (yù)

Aug 29, 2018
5 min

玉 (yù)

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

My Childhood up a Tree

Aug 22, 2018
4 min

My Childhood up a Tree

by Lesley Evans Ogden This week we bring you another story from our Plant Love Stories Live event held recently at North American Congress on Conservation Biology in Toronto. This week's story is by Lesley Evans Ogden. You can hear her story using the video link below A transcript of her story is available below: Growing up in rural Ontario just north of Kingston, my family lived next door to a farm. The farmers were a friendly and generous family and my brother and I were g

When life gives you a lemon tree

Venus Fly Teacher

Apr 18, 2018
3 min

Venus Fly Teacher

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

Tomato love story

Feb 14, 2018
2 min

Tomato love story

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