ALEX AND THE VANILA PLANT

 

ALEX AND THE VANILLA PLANT - Sometimes your camera can lead you to unexpected gems of life. Leslie is just a wide place in the road before jumping onto the freeway. The only notable thing, an abandoned convenience store. In the empty parking lot, a simple man had set up a card table and was selling small plants. His looks gentle like a man of soil and earth. I knew not where he grew his plants or his background, except for the aging faded car he drove. Still here he was, holding court to all that passed proudly showing his plants. He reached toward me with one, “smell it?” He ask. It smelled of vanilla, “that’s it,” Alex said. I later learned that growing a vanilla plant was not easy. You had to have the just right combination of Temperature, humidity and light. The last being the most important and delicate. The plant required 8 to 12 hours of bright light each day, but harsh light would burn the leaves and steal the special scent of the plant. He went to get another plant to show me, but was surrounded by other passerby’s. I never learned more about Alex, but knew he had found peace in life close to the soil and probably understood GOD better than I.