Musings on Babies

Our famiy has good news! Another child is coming to us. My niece has announced she is going to be a mommy for the first time. The parents and grandparents-to-be are very excited, and there's lots of preparation going on already. Our extended family is already huge and intensely close. Even though we are a diverse bunch, we would drop everything and be there for each other in a moment of need.

I was thinking recently how dependent an unborn baby is on its mother. Safe inside the womb, the baby receives whatever comes through the umbilical cord, good or bad. For many months the child is fed and nourished, and grows. Parent and child are as one, but the child is a completely unique individual.

As I was spending time with some of my new conifer babies, I realized how similar these infant plants are to human babies. A plant propagator starts with the mother plant, called the understock. It is healthy with a good root system. A small branch from another plant is grafted into the stem of the healthy plant, and if the surgery is successful, the small branch will begin to take its sustenance from the parent. While still attached to the understock, it will develop into a plant with characteristics completely different from the parent it is depending on for its very life.

Abies koreana 'Kohout's Icebreaker'

Pinus parviflora 'Tanima no yuki'

These are two of my babies, still attached to the parent. When they get a little older, the understock will be cut off at the graft and the new plant will develop into an adult.

Life is a miracle, whatever its species!