No more Pinching!

You know exactly where this is going. Bonsai was just the beginning. Beginning of an entire new series of questionable gardening practices. I said “questionable” and not wrong.

Lets start with pinching. A widely approved and accepted Gardening Practice. Pinching plants is a form of pruning that encourages branching on the plant. This means that when you pinch a plant, you are removing the main stem, forcing the plant to grow two new stems from the leaf nodes below the pinch or cut. (Source – GardeningKnowHow – You can check the entire article on pinching here)

As you would have noticed, I have emphasized the words ‘forcing the plant’. My question is, why would you do that? Now before you say because it branches out and becomes bushy and produces more leaves/buds/flowers/fruits etc. All I want to say is it would have eventually done so. When the main stem has grown enough, the plant will branch out. All the pinching is just done to hasten the process. Why? Why can’t we allow them to grow at their own pace and in their own way? Is it so necessary to mold everything to our convenience?

Let us go a step further, with pinching we at least had a reason that it would produce more. What about Topiary? Why do we go about chopping plants/shrubs/trees? Just because it is appealing to the eyes? We chop them right till the time we get the desired shape and then we go on chopping to maintain that desired shape. All I wonder is, does nobody find it brutal?

Lets assume that I have an authority over you or I am powerful than you. Imagine me telling you exactly how you should look. Your weight, height, skin color, hair.. everything. I decide and I impose it on you. How does it feel? If you have attained the kind of weight I want you to have, I stop feeding you. If you’re underweight I feed you unceasingly. I chop your hair to the length I desire and tan you enough so that I get the desired skin color. How does it feel? Well, you didn’t die and I am feeding you as well, so whatever I am doing is right, right?

We have come a long way from autocracy to democracy just to support the fact that every human being is equal. Lets take a step forward to support another fact that every living being is equal.