Dear Father,

Today I am grateful for learning how to make my lettuce last longer.

Lettuce is one of my favourite leafy greens because it is pretty much tasteless and it doesn’t make me purge.

But in the past, it used to give me serious problems.

I would buy a bunch of fresh juicy lettuce from our roadside Aboki, but as soon as I was ready to use it the next day, it would have started wilting. By the second day, half of the remaining lettuce is wilted. By the third day, I’ll end up throwing it all away.

So for a long time, I stopped buying lettuce.

I kept wondering how the Abokis kept their lettuce fresh. They don’t store them in the fridge. They display their lettuce even under the hot sun for days before they are able to sell them off. Yet their lettuce always looks fresh and green.

How do they do it?

I eventually found out their secret – WATER!

I noticed they always sprinkled water on their vegetables. Water is life. Plants need water to survive!

So you know what I did? I started storing my lettuce in a bowl of water in the fridge. The lettuce takes up water through it’s tiny roots. The water continues to feed the stem and leaves keeping it fresh and light green.

In fact, one time when I did this, by the second day, I started to see a new baby lettuce leaf growing in the middle of the bunch.

In the near future, I actually want to cultivate my own little garden where I can always access fresh vegetables and herbs. We’ll see about that.

Your DD,

Joy Taiwo.