Who is Ferb?

Ferb is a mini cactus that I purchased around 2009-2010. I remember the day clearly because I was hanging out at uni with my two best friends when this funny looking man approached us. He was holding a sort of tray full of these beautiful miniature plants and of course our attention got caught immediately. He started talking to us about plants and about nature, and we were soon convinced, so we decided we should each get one. It was a girls connecting kinda thing and I honestly think our bond just grew stronger since then.

We bought one each and we named them Phineas, Ferb and Perry. Yes, after the cartoon characters, we were big fans.

_{Excuse the crappy quality of my crappy 2009 camera phone}

So we each went home with our cacti and started taking care of them. The man explained to us that a mini cactus didn’t need much water as other plants so we could water them once a week. He also said that it should receive a proper amount of light but not too much, and finally he added: they won’t grow much. As you can see, they were planted in this kind of bamboo miniature container pots that would prevent our cacti to basically stop being a miniature plant.

What happened next

This is a funny side of the story, or at least I’ve always found it funny. Me and my two friends have very particular personalities, and while we have so much in common, we are very different and took different approaches when it came to taking responsibility for these little plants. I think things have changed a lot now for the three of us, it’s almost been 10 years since we got them, but the way each handled the situation was very on tune with our personalities back then.

So, Phineas belonged to my friend Amaranta. She never had a plant before, and was super excited to have a living thing to brighten up her room, but I guess she got too excited (or too careless, we’ll never know) and she either watered Phineas too much or not at all. He ended up dying after a few weeks.

Perry’s fate wasn’t any better. My friend Gigi had other plants in her house, she knew how to take care of them and she was doing a great job taking care of Perry. He was placed in the kitchen window, next to a couple other plants and a bird cage, where he would get proper sunlight and water. Alas, he was so small that she was washing her dishes one day and something startled her, she ended up bumping into little Perry and down he went. She lives in the 6th floor of an apartment building and her kitchen window leads straight to the rubbish bins. He was lost forever.

Then we get to Ferb. He was doing alright. I’ve always been surrounded by plants because my mum has always liked them so I placed him inside this huge pot that contained a really big aloe plant, that way Perry’s fate wouldn’t be repeated. I would water him occasionally and he would receive the amount of sunlight he needed. He soon started growing a few stems and he looked like this:

_{Again, sorry for the horrible picture quality.}

Ferb’s personal growth

The years went by and Ferb was healthy but grew no more stems. At one point, he started looking less green and had more of a yellowish hue to him, and even though I was still watering him once a week or so, I feared he might wither. I took him out of my window and placed him a bit away from the sun, thinking that might be the reason. He got a little bit better after that, and the stems he had grown before got even bigger.

Then I went through a hard period of my life. I was struggling with a lot of things, including depression, and I decided I needed a change. I started planning to leave the country and move abroad, and in the mean time I also decided that Ferb could use a bigger space than he had, because the container he was in couldn’t hold his new weight. I wanted him to produce new stems so I could find a way to give them to my friends and they could grow their own cacti again. I bought a new bigger pot for him, some new soil and replanted him. And boy that went wrong.

I couldn’t find any pictures of that stage, but my Ferb got stunted: he wouldn’t grow and he started to wither again. Around that time I had left the country for a couple of months, trying to find a better future for myself, like many other Venezuelans. That... also went wrong and I had to come back soon to my country, only to find my poor Ferb was nearly dying.

I gotta admit I felt I was withering too, I felt incredibly sad and frustrated, I felt trapped in this country with no possibility to grow and right when I had the chance to change environments I realized I couldn’t grow there either… just like Ferb. Why was that?

Understanding growth

There are many things that allow plants to be stunted:

Nutrient deficiencies
Dehydration
Viruses
Containers

No matter how well a plant is cared for, placing it in a container may stunt its growth. When grown in a pot, the roots of plants will expand, reaching outwards until contacting the sides of the container. Once they do so, the roots send a message to the plant, telling it to stop growing, according to the BBC, and the plant naturally limits its own size. Placing plants in larger pots, however, allows them to grow bigger.

Source

When a plant is stunted it can never reach its full potential. I thought Ferb had a lot of potential, that’s why I decided to replant him. I also thought I had a lot of potential… why was a change of “container” not enough?

Here’s when my granny came to the rescue haha.

She has always had a way with plants, to the point where I always tell her that she must have been a witch of sorts in another life haha. She took my Ferb out of the pot I had carefully chosen for him and she planted him somewhere else, she mixed some of the soil he was in with another soil that had proven to be rich in nutrients, she would water him about 2 times a week and she started talking to him every day.

Change was immediate.

Ferb started growing in a way that I never thought he’d be able to and continues to do so... it still surprises me.

_{November, 2014: about a month after my granny replanted Ferb's stems.}

_{February, 2015.}

My own personal growth

Just like a plant’s growth may involve a series of elements that need to work together in order for the plant to remain healthy and strong, personal growth involves mental, physical, social, emotional, and spiritual development that allows a person to live a productive and satisfying life.

I am not much a “mystic” type of person, I could even say I’m a bit of a skeptic, but there’s something inside me that is convinced that the second Ferb started growing out of his stunt, so did I.

Around that time I was still coming out of a very dark stage of my life, I was forced to come back to a place I didn’t feel I fit in, I had no money and no drive and suddenly... I found a great job. That job was a source of a lot of new opportunities to grow professionally, the starting point to achieving a lot of the things I’ve been able to achieve for the past 4 years, professionally and emotionally.

Every time I see a new stem growing out of Ferb I can’t help but think: “that might just be another opportunity coming my way”.

I have changed deeply in these last almost-10-years, I have gained and lost so many things, so many people, and it’s been a hard and painful process but it’s also been an incredible journey.

Ferb reminds me every day that we all go through phases of “stuntedness”, when we feel like we’re stuck, like there’s no space for us to grow, like we’re trapped, just like I still feel living in my country… but we can always get through it, we just have to take good care of ourselves: be sure to plant ourselves in good soil, find the right nutrients for our soul, grow strong foundations, persevere and even accept help from the ones we love. _{(thanks gran!)}

"Even the largest pot was not large enough not to limit growth."

Source

Most days I feel stunted, I still feel limited by my own container(s), but I guess that doesn’t mean that I haven’t grown at all; it means that I am continuously growing.

I think that’s a huge advantage we humans have over plants: we can recognise it when we don’t fit our container anymore and when it’s time to grow out of it. I guess we not only grow as much as our environment let us grow, but also as much as we let ourselves. Either way, I want to be able to break any containers I find my way and grow as much as I can… And you know what? When I look at Ferb I'm certain I will.