Upon the Little Prince's return, he shared with me many of the conversations he had during his travels on earth. In one such conversation with a pilot, he explained about the baobabs that grow on our little planet (Asteroid B-612). He said the pilot made a great mental effort and finally understood that seeds "push a charming little spring inoffensively upward toward the sun. If it is only a sprout of radish or the sprig of a rose-bush, one would let it grow wherever it might wish. But when it is a bad plant, one must destroy it as soon as possible, the very first instant that one recognizes it." This is a very important principle on our planet.
The soil here is infested with the bad seeds of the baobab which can never be gotten rid of if they are attended to at too late a time. As you can see from the photos I have included here (having found them quickly in Flicker and uploaded them with ease* using the Add Image button), baobabs could grow to be as wide as our asteroid, blocking the sun from my leaves and the sunset from the Little Prince's view. Their thirsty roots could bore clear through the ground splitting terra firma into little pieces to float apart in space.
The Little Prince sees to it that he regularly pulls up baobabs at the first moment he has distinguished them from a rosebush (of which there are none others like myself). The pilot on earth realized that the danger is so little understood he has taken it upon himself to say, "Children,...watch out for the baobabs!"
*After four failed tries, I discovered I had not checked the "accept agreement" box at the very bottom of the page. Once that was selected, I uploaded with ease.
2 comments:
The little prince is rather frightening in his rush to judgment! What if he makes a mistake and destroys something that looks like a baobob to him but isn't? Have you never pulled up a weedy-looking thing that really wasn't a weed?
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