With me and succulents it was not love at first sight. I could not tell you what it was about them, but I never quite fancied them. This is me who as a child had dozens of plants, including a few succulents, in my little nursery at the back of our family home. I remember I would usually skip the succulent plants whenever I watered and tended my nursery.

One evening, as I was admiring how plump and green my other plants were, I noticed these yellow, shrunken, and sickly plants in the corner. My succulents were dying and more than I thought the plants were ugly, I felt bad that I was somehow responsible for the suffering that these plants were going through.

There is a saying that trees and plants always look like the people they live with somehow, and I thought to myself, if these plants look like these, is that a reflection of what I looked like? If all hope was not lost, I knew I had to do something to revive these succulents, to revive myself.

I got to work and in a short while the succulents regained their plump and colour, and I was happy in a way that I could not explain. Here was this plant that I disdained, now making me happy and enriched in a certain way. I was grateful for this magical, intelligent, and beautiful gift of nature. I was not going to let them suffer any more.