🌿 Green Gifts from Kind Hands
Cheryl Quejada-Canning, Sydney. 10 October 2026, a minute read.
Excerpt
Green gifts from kind hands, rooted in earth — meant to nourish both body and spirit. In these small harvests, I found the same quiet grounding that carried me in between paintings.
Green Gifts from Kind Hands
There were mornings when life felt heavy, and then there were mornings like those when kindness arrived wrapped in leaves, blossoms, stems, and soil. Those were the gifts that steadied me. Those were the offerings that reminded me I was held by people, by memory, and by the land itself.
I was never a flower person.
Cut flowers were beautiful, yes — but they always felt like endings.
Gifts from the earth felt like beginnings.
One morning, my neighbour handed me a bouquet of saluyot, sitaw, talbos ng kamote, and okra. A bouquet I understood. A bouquet that spoke my language. Nourishing, humble, rooted. These were the kinds of gifts that touched my heart because they carried intention, not performance. They carried care, not ceremony.
There were other quiet blessings too - Thai basil from my brother, still fragrant with his thoughtfulness, and a sun‑kissed pineapple from our kind vegetable lady. Small gestures, but they softened the day in ways that words rarely could. Food gifts had a way of saying; I know what you love. I know what nourishes you.
And then there were the harvests from home — the ones that anchored me even from afar.
A plant‑based breakfast from our garden: taro root (gabi), corkwood tree flowers (katuday), squash blossoms and tops, and string beans (sitaw). Freshly picked moringa leaves (marungay), jute (saluyot), squash (kalabasa), katuday flowers, and custard apple (guyabano). A bouquet of mustard leaves from a neighbour - an early morning surprise. Dragon fruit I planted myself. Black pepper I grew and used in my own cooking.
These were not just ingredients.
They were memories. They were proof of care - mine, my family’s, my community’s, the land’s.
And somewhere in all of this, I realised something: This was the same energy that carried me in between paintings.
The quiet abundance.
The slow nourishment.
The patience of growth.
The tenderness of receiving.
The grounding that came from tending something living.
When I was between paintings, I was never idle.
I was gathering.
I was absorbing.
I was being fed by moments like these, by gifts like these, by the earth itself.
These green gifts reminded me that creativity was not always loud or dramatic. Sometimes it was a leaf placed in your hand.
Sometimes it was a neighbour’s kindness.
Sometimes it was the memory of a garden you once tended.
Sometimes it was the simple act of being nourished.
In between paintings, these small offerings kept me steady.
They reminded me to pause, breathe, and receive.
They reminded me that life continued to give, even in the quietest ways.
And so, I rested in that quiet abundance, until the next painting called.
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