Once in a while, you meet people who challenge you to the fiber of your being, while encouraging you with grace and a confidence in you that you struggle to feel for yourself.  Yesterday was such a day!

I was home pattering around trying to plant flowers and beautify a space that’s been looking sad and raggedy lately.  I am one of those people who believe that homesteading comes with a desire for beauty and aesthetics that I try to showcase by building beautiful garden spaces.  Places where one can sit and ruminate and contemplate life.  As I was doing my flower planting, I realized I did not have enough plants, especially succulents to cover the space.  So, I called one of my “neighbors” and fellow Kenya Horticultural Society (Lower Eastern) members asking if she had flowers for sale.  I have mentioned this band of merry gardeners in my blog before.  They have something we call in my mother tongue,” ikinda”. A can-do, never-say-die attitude that can turn a desolate piece of land into a little Eden!

So, I grabbed one of my groundskeepers and told him we had a job to do.  We needed to get plants, and my neighbor and her husband were home and available and had plants.  Off we went!

My neighbor Celia (not her name) and her husband Brad (not his name either) have a property in Eastern Kenya, close enough to my place to be considered neighbors in the most-loose sense of the word.  Their property spans roughly twenty acres, which houses their home, and a well-established restaurant with beautiful gardens – but that’s a story for later.

When I got to their home, I quickly realized I had not fully appreciated the extent of the work they have done over the years to their property.  Sometimes you speak to people, and they try to describe the work they have done, and because we were all taught to always understate our achievements, never brag, and don’t show off, we never really capture the extent of our achievements.  Well, today I hold the pen and it’s my story, so I shall brag for them!

Celia has built three or four plant nurseries, with an amazing variety of plants.  The first nursery I went to has the plants that she is currently selling, and is adjacent to her respectable kitchen garden which feeds her family, her restaurant staff and her home staff.  Yet she maintains that the husband is the farmer, not her.  I tried to believe her! She has another nursery at the restaurant that has plants in pots for sale to guests of the restaurant/events garden.  She has then created another nursery at home, which her husband joked is her happy place.  She had him install a light so should she be potting flowers and darkness comes along work does not stop.  That is the extent of her passion!  These plants she does not sell.  She has been keeping them as a source for landscaping her home and the restaurant/event gardens.  As I spoke to her, she mentioned she would stop selling plants as she wanted to use them as ornamental pieces for her guests during events.  I felt lucky to have bought what might be the last pieces of plants before she stops selling.  Her home garden is glorious – and that is an understatement.  She promptly gave me plant seedlings and seeds to propagate for my home.  At every stop she would ask if I had a particular plant variety, and if I did not, she quickly gave me seedlings.

As we walked around the home, I started to get a clearer picture of how much work they have put into the place.  When you look at the neighboring homes, they look dry and a little neglected. Their homestead is warm, cozy, cared for, nourished, looked after, and definitely occasionally hugged!

We then came to the pièce de résistance (time to practice the little French I studied)! Brad keeps dairy cows.  That statement does not do his scale of operation any justice, so let me try again! Brad supplies dairy milk to one of the largest Dairy Companies in Kenya! His cows make you want to give them names like Molly and Daisy – they have numbered ear tags, which I guess makes sense given that they are eighty.  They are wholesome happy looking cows, with big almond shaped dark eyes and sweeping eyelashes that make you want to go out and get lash extensions!  Then there are the calves.  I suspect I looked alien to them.  They kept staring at me with open eyed wonder – I guess they are used to Brad and the other grounds keepers, but not to me.  Every morning, they let the cows out to get some sun and walk about.  They then lock up the cows in their shed and let out the calves to frolic, play and also get some sun.  I visited the milking shed – crisp, clean, white like the halls of a hospital.  Everything in its place and a place for everything.  Milk is collected three times a week, so Brad has a cooling vat that keeps the milk at an even temperature waiting for collection.  I was floored by the scale of the operation, and also by the grace, humility and gratitude with which Brad treats the place.

We rounded off my tour of the property with a quick walk to the restaurant/event grounds and I loved the idea of it.  But most importantly, you could see Celia’s fingerprints all over the plants and flowers.

I learnt so much out of this impromptu visit.  I need a garden/plant center for myself.  Plants are expensive, so propagate your own.  I learnt that homesteading can go beyond just living on and off the land – it can become a commercial enterprise, done with the same ethos of a homestead.  I learnt the value of humility and grace even in the face of exceptional success. On the drive home, my groundskeeper kept telling me he wanted to start a nursery of his own and that I needed to make it happen for him.  Challenge accepted!

As the day wound down and I remembered why I had come in the first place, we sat under some Grevillea trees and I just said thank you! To Celia and Brad, and the friendship brought about by Ikinda and Kenya Horticultural Society.

Sadly, I am of the generation that never really got comfortable in front of a camera.  I soaked in all this information and knowledge and at no point did I remember to take photos. The only photo standing to evidence this great day is of the three of us sitting under the Grevillea trees after a long day spent traipsing across the land that is home to Zamar Gardens!