Green Thumbs

My granny had a green thumb. She could make anything grow, anywhere. Her house was surrounded by beautiful flowerbeds and her garden never had a bad year. She loved being outside and working on the yard. She even mowed her huge yard until the year she broke her ankle (and then crawled to the porch to wait for someone to come visit her). Unfortunately, my mom and I are not her heirs when it comes to gardening. In fact, I think the only thing I really inherited from her is stubbornness (as John will attest). She had her weaknesses (not being able to remember people's names, she called Marsha Marcy from the beginning), but gardening was her thing.

I bring up my Granny's green thumb b/c I've been kinda thinking about her here recently. When I was on my mission in Germany, my parent's went to Hawaii to see my oldest brother graduate from college (Ben sure knows how to pick schools!). Mom fell in love w/ Hawaii, who wouldn't, and brought home a plumeria flower cutting. She then came home and ordered more from QVC (her addiction of choice). When I moved to Huntington and into a house, she gave me a cutting of one of her plumeria flowers w/ very specific directions on how not to kill it (both of us are not the best @ keeping things alive). Naturally, I lost the cutting for a good while, but when I found it, decided to plant it anyways. It was not dead, a minor miracle. Last year, I decided to re pot the poor thing into a huge container (that was full of another plant that I killed). I bought miracle grow potting soil and re potted it before the spring really set in. It bloomed until November. I bring this up b/c mom's many plumeria flowers have only bloomed once. Everyday she would call me to see how my plant was doing, if there were any new blooms etc. I began emailing her photos of the flowers to show off (hey, not perfect!). So I was delighted the other day when mom noticed that my plumeria was starting to get it's leaves (they all die off every winter, then grow back before it blooms again). I also noticed it's starting to fork. So I'm hoping to have a beautiful flowering plumeria again this summer. It will be nice b/c when it's not summer, everyone who sees it asks me why I have a stick in dirt by my front door.