Banana Leaf Love

#leaves #photography #bananaplants #nature #macro #abstract

Like enormous floppy dog's ears our garden is full of banana leaves, droopy and flapping. They are like no other but like the rest of the plant their familiarity means they are generally under-appreciated. Except in my garden.

Despite the prevalence of plastic bags, banana leaves can still sometimes be found wrapping our sweets and rice and curries, the very same leaves that once held enough dew for a squirrel's bath. Thai plastic bags are now tossed to the roadside because that was always the harmless way to deal with banana-leaf wrappers and this wrapper-attitude has stubbornly lingered. I can sense the banana plants rolling their eyes at our stupidity.

With the growth of our grove there came a game. A game I have been playing for years for my own private, guilty fun but perhaps also with an element of respect. Whenever I walk through the patch of banana plants with their luxuriantly large floppy leaves that can start higher than my reach and finish two arcing metres later around my knees, I do not touch them. There is always space between them and I bend and dip and slide through these gaps at a challenging pace that makes me look a little Monty Python. Elsewhere in the garden this game has the real purpose of not wanting to brush against thorns or weaver ants or sticky seeds but around the bananas it’s just for fun and I walk through the banana grove more often than I need to. For their part they use the breeze to try to tag me. Those banana leaves can be quite playful.

And I have noticed that the banana leaves play the game themselves, not always successfully, but there is respect in the way they grow into spaces. I can now see that any crowding of neighbours is actually apologetic more than competitive.

Clear skies and a low sun with an iphone and the time to watch the play of shadows and shapes and pattern and texture. Details on which to focus in the benign presence of gently flapping dog-ear banana leaves. I walk out of the grove a calmer man.

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