It all comes back to Photosynthesis

A lifetime ago (or so it feels), I was a student of biology at uni.  I studied hard for four years, majoring in Botany and Zoology and finishing with first class honours in a Botany/Ecology area.  Later I studied to be a secondary school teacher.... a biology teacher.

I've always loved biology - since before I started school I loved to know how living things worked, and I remember being in prep and studying (and mostly understanding) the detailed human biology diagrams that we had hung on our toilet walls (my mum was studying nursing at the time).

I grew up wanting to be a nurse, and then a doctor.  But somewhere along the lines, I realised that plants and (non-human) animals appealed to me a lot more than human patients, and so that is where my study lead me. 

I often have people that have known me for years worry over the fact that I "don't use my education".  No, I don't work as a secondary school teacher or a scientist.  But I use my education every single day.

My teaching education is used every time I step in front of a belly dance class (or even an audience).  I know how to teach those people - I just teach a much different topic to what I originally set out to do.  I teach my children every day, and often the topics are biology related....  yesterday, we had an in depth conversation about Siamese twins (how they form, birth of twins, the genetics etc), the other day it was ecosystems in Thailand, and as a family, we are setting nutritional goals for ourselves with a good understanding of what the human body needs to function, how the parts work and why we need to eat (or shouldn't eat) certain foods.

And I use my study in my garden.  Being a zoologist doesn't make you a farmer and being a botanist doesn't make you a gardener.  But I understand all the biology and biochemistry behind my mini-farm. 

And because I have that background study I know that when my plants are droopy, they've lost turgidity in their leaves and need water flowing through their xylem to hold them up.  I know that when I put nutrients from animal manure etc into the soil that the plants are growing in, that they need water to dissolve those nutrients in order for them to be taken up into the plant and put to use.  And I know that plants absorb sunlight using chlorophyll (the green pigment in leaves) and convert it to energy through a little chemical reaction known as photosynthesis. 

The basic chemical equation for photosynthesis is:

source

The biproducts of this reaction is ATP and NADPH - compounds which store a lot of chemical energy that can then be accessed by the plant.

Photosynthesis is the process that gives us oxygen and reduces the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, so as humans who produce copious quantities of carbon dioxide, we should love that little reaction.  As a gardener, and someone that would love to produce most of the food their family eats , I love that little reaction because it makes my plants grow and produce food.

But, and yes, there is a but, if you look at the equation, you'll notice that it requires water.  And water is something we don't have enough of here since we no longer have access to bore water, there is no town water supply here and we have limited rainwater in tanks. So our plants are having to survive on limited waterings and recycled grey water.  They're surviving, but not really thriving. 

So this week's big decision is to get ourselves a bore drilled.  It is expensive, potentially destructive and something we had hoped to do without.  But we have committed to our garden and living the way we do, and without enough water, we just can't do it.  We've discussed all the pros and cons, we've checked the finances and agreed that this decision won't make us richer, but then I think about it all again as I lug out buckets of water from the house to my precious plants, and I realise, sometimes, it all comes back to photosynthesis.