I turn 46 in the next few days. On occasion, my birthday lands on Mother’s Day and it becomes all the more special for my own mom.

I’ve always joked that if I were her firstborn, it would be a chicken-and the egg paradox. Without her, I would have had no birthday and without me she would have had no Mother’s Day. Alas, I have two older sisters so mom gets first recognition. This year I plan on cooking for her and my birthday narrowly escapes the shared event.

It dawned on me that I have spent half of my adult years cooking in professional kitchens, and the other half professionally landscaping. While spending my days doing the latter, I’ve found overlap in the two. Hard work, long hours, hot environments, and providing a service that drives head long into critique. Beyond the obvious similarities, I’ve discovered their language of love.

The power of food is real and serves as a healer, teacher and time capsule in so many ways. We turn to food when others are mourning or in need. Chicken soup for the ill and favorite meals for the homecoming college freshmen. Food is comforting and memory invoking.

A time honored recipe not only serves as a rite of passage, but a trip back in time or a visit from a loved one passed. Every year my mother makes cornbread dressing at Thanksgiving. It’s her mother’s recipe and divine in its simplicity. There isn’t a year that goes by without a story told or a tear shed over the memory of my grandmother. Her legacy catapulted to the main stage of our conversation with just one bite of dressing. I can see her now, lovingly judging each of us.

I’ve found the same to be true with horticulture. They say that a great man plants trees whose shade he knows he may never sit under. I see this example daily as I ride through Columbus. My stepfather Alan was a well known local landscaper and his legacy of shade trees adorn the sidewalks and lawns of Possum Town. I myself recently planted a cherry tree for one of his customers that I now work for. We stood in his yard and shared laughter over the other cherry tree not even 50 feet away that was planted by Alan. It was the wrong variety of cherry tree. He insisted that it would grow on them, but over time it didn’t. He was funny like that, your yard became his yard and little was left for discussion.

My approach is a little more subtle. So here I stood to plant the correct one. Rather than removing the incorrect tree, we simply planted the other close by. How could we remove a tree that carried a story with it? A story of a man that always meant well, in spite of himself. Alan is gone from this earth now and won’t be sitting under the shade of either tree. But both will serve as a time capsule and invocation of laughter and memories. Two cherry trees indisputably different but planted with love. Two landscapers indisputably different, both leaving shade for others to sit.

This Mother’s Day, I encourage everyone to cook, plant, and eat with love. Tell the stories and visit the ones who have left us.

Statistically Mother’s Day is the holiday with the highest number of people eating out. If you find yourself to be in that group, afterward plant something for mom, preferably a tree. Never mind if it’s the right one, the stories will grow with it and the shade will do the rest.

Clay Bowen is a Columbus native who cooked professionally as a chef in fine dining for 12 years and appeared on the third season of Top Chef. He is also a licensed landscape horticulturist and is currently the general manager of a local landscaping company. Bowen writes in his free time and is working on a book about his experiences and travel.