“It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.”
—Mark Twain (quoted in Steal Like an Artist)
“Stolen plants always grow.”
—Beatrix Potter
My wife routinely picks up clippings and fallen plant parts off the road when we go on our daily walks and brings them home and propagates new plants from them, so I was delighted to discover that there’s a term called “proplifting”:
This tweet recently went viral and caused an online row about whether it’s right or wrong. (Or legal, which is often different from right or wrong!) I love this Reddit page, which is titled “one man’s trash is another man’s propagation.”
My friend Matt sent me this photo of a plant he grew from a single leaf he picked up at a big box store which will go unnamed. (On yesterday’s bike ride, I told my neighbor Hank, a gardener, about proplifting, and ironically, at the end of our walk we found a whole fern in the gutter to take home.)
I often wonder how different Steal Like an Artist would be if I had been interested in gardening then as much as I am now. It provides such rich metaphors for creative work. (Gardening was a big influence on Keep Going, hence the final chapter, “Plant your garden.”)
Filed under: gardening