Eat Your Cake and Have it Too

Of course, that’s not the way the expression goes. It’s supposed to be “Have your cake and eat it too”.

But what’s so unusual about that? In life, first you get a piece of cake, so now you have it and then you eat it!
The expression really means that you want to have the best of both worlds. Have something, consume it and still have it.
But as we all know, you can’t have it both ways, it’s impossible. Or is it?

Try a simple experiment:

Eat an apple. Take the seeds and plant them in a little bit of soil in a cutoff little milk box like you once did in First Grade. Water it, pull the weeds.
Wait about six months.
Carefully replant the tiny sapling into a giant box filled with carefully measured out soil (be sure not to shake the original soil off the tender roots).
Wait another 4 or 5 years until the apple tree starts producing ripe, juicy apples.
Eat ‘em. Bake ‘em. Make apple pie out of them.
Now go back and measure the amount of soil left in the box.
If you’ve done this properly, you will find that only a tiny fraction of soil has been consumed.
So where did all those apples come from?
Where did the tree and its leaves come from?
The answer is water, sunlight and soil!

(If you like, try repeating the experiment using just water and sunlight. It just won’t work without soil).

Every tree, every plant, every stalk of wheat and blade of grass utilizes soil and its nutrients to grow. Yet, after all these years, the earth is still encrusted about four feet deep with rich, fertile soil. Seems like they’ve all eaten their soil and have it too.

How does that happen? _ _ _