"Plants are similar in that as a species they respond in kind to influences both natural and man-made. Of course, bamboo species worldwide flower in their time. Bamboo species begin to send up new shoots—culms—every springtime, an event anticipated by bamboo lovers everywhere. Each year each plant sends up culms increasingly taller depending on the favorable or unfavorable environmental conditions it is living in. Each year gardeners celebrate the new generation of culms until finally some years in the future the plant reaches its species height limit. Each plant in each species “knows” genetically how tall its culms will eventually be, and it marshals all its energies to create underground rhizomes that will support the expanding growth and fill the ground or pot in which it is growing. The little label on each pot of bamboo says how tall and wide it will grow, but every gardener uses that measure for general estimating. The bamboo gardener is always secretly hopeful that their specimens will continue growing taller and wider than the previous year. Like hoping wordlessly that our life somehow will get better. We tend bamboo and our lives with that intention. May you grow and flourish. Grow in your divine essence."
