[One Thousand Characters a Day] The Intimate Story of a Plant Caretaker 'First Plant'＜2＞

Editor's NotePlant YouTuber 'Apisto' takes photos as a ritual whenever he first brings a plant home. When a plant is sick, he looks back at the photos taken when it was healthy to renew his determination to care for it well again. When rumors spread that there was a "strangely plant-covered place" on the 11th floor of the building where his office is located, he decided to cover the entire space with plants. A year later, the ceiling of his plant room was densely covered with Scindapsus, and tropical vines competed to climb one of the walls. One day, while collecting name tags of the many plants that had died, he suddenly felt guilty and made a memorial monument out of the plant name tags. Although the life of a plant caretaker may sometimes seem quirky, these stories were each gathered and became material for his YouTube videos. He shared the growth records of plants in videos over periods ranging from as short as one month to over a year. 675 characters.

One day, when I looked inside the terrarium, the green leaves of Pumila had turned red. Pumila (Wangmoram, Ficus pumila) is a vine plant with leaves as small as a thumbnail. The reason Pumila's leaves turned red was probably because I recently installed a new plant light.

Pumila sensed a small change and was sending me a signal. It seems that Pumila mistook the plant light for sunlight and reacted to the red wavelength. Instead of speaking, Pumila was expressing its condition through the color of its leaves, nourished by light, water, and soil.

"Caretaker, I'm basking in a light I've never seen before, and my leaves are just blazing. Isn't that cool?"

Fortunately, that day I didn't miss the plant's message and took a photo of Pumila.

"Oh, that's cool."

Plants don't speak indirectly. So the plant caretaker only needs to be ready to listen as the plant speaks. When Pumila's new leaves suddenly turn red, it's enough to look into what changes the plant is experiencing.

But that day, I was just lucky to understand Pumila's message. More often, I miss the signs, like when a begonia blooms. At times like that, I think,

'I'm not living in the present right now.'

Listening to the language of plants is ultimately no different from focusing on the present moment, as Pumila has taught me.

－Apisto (Shin Juhyun), First Plants, Media Saem, 17,800 KRW

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.