It was in 2019 when I went to the last in person seminar. After teaching German to functionally illiterate learners for over three years I had to take a course on how to teach functionally illiterate learners German. The seminar was in Böblingen, south of Stuttgart, over three consecutive weekends.
It was spring and the weather was beautiful on the first Saturday.
In the centre of Böblingen is a lake and I took the lunchbreak to go for a walk.
I don’t remember much about the seminar but that spring day is still present in my mind.
I could have chosen one meaning for vegetate: to lead a passive existence without exertion of body or mind. My mind is in a sufficiently vegetative state today that I won’t even bother to try and find a photo to illustrate that meaning.
So I’m going with the second meaning: to grow in the manner of a plant. This wild mustard and even the shrubs in the back, and the trees are growing in the manner of plants. How else would they grow?