Cement Greenery

 There’s a rather lush little plant growing in about an inch-wide crevice in long-solidified concrete on the roof of my home. A couple tinier plants join in growing beside it. Above it, some distance away on the parapet, where one concrete meets the concrete of a different granularity in the neighbor’s home, moss is growing.

These are urban plants, cement greenery. 

That little plant is doing what a plant is meant to do - grow. It doesn’t care where. It just grows. 

It’s certainly different from its tribe that lives in the understory of forests or maybe even a well-defined garden. Those environments allow a plant to thrive - they are designed for plants to do their thing in them - spaces of nurture. 

This plant is growing in an environment that is very much the antithesis of a verdant ecosystem. And yet, there is is. A splash of life, of bright green, against deep black-grey concrete aged by decades. 

The eye doesn’t go in admiration to that wall, it goes to the spot of bright, little life. 

The trees lining the road just across from the house don’t evoke the same strong emotions as this little plant does - those trees are where trees typically go even if they don’t have the greatest of environments to thrive in. But this little plant - it offers hope. 

This plant is determined to thrive in the environment it got put in. And its presence makes its environment better. 

It’s a fighter. 

Nature is magnificent that way. We are part of nature too and magnificent in just the same way.