The legacy of plants.
This week I worked in a very active third grade class (I'm exhausted).
During morning meeting we ask the kids an open ended question just to get them in the habit of answering open ended questions and working on self-expression.
One of the questions this week was if money was no object what is a gift you would want ot get your mom. The kids had all kinds of answers, a new bag, a puppy, dinner, a jumprope (the shade).
The teachers are also expected to answer. My response was a greenhouse. My mother loved plants and gardening. I spent many summer days helping my mother tend to her vegetable garden. When her and my father moved to Virginia from The Bronx she some how managed to transplant the rose bush I got her one Mother's day. One of the last conversations I had with her was her telling me that she couldn't garden anymore because her knees hurt too much. It was in that moment that I knew that the proverbial clock was ticking.
She passed not long after.
Early this year when Aliya King Neil moved to L.A. she asked me to keep up with her plants which consisted of a couple pothoses and a couple more monsteras. One of the monsteras she had before we ever met.
More than keep her plants alive, the four she had are now over twenty as I have been propagating them since she left. It has become an accidental hobby of sorts.
It wasn't until I thought about my mother having a greenhouse did I link her to the growing collection of plants I have cultivated. My ability to tend to these plants is a direct connection to my mother. She was the one who put my hands in the dirt and taught me how to make things grow.
Aliya keeps telling me that I need to name the plants. It's been a tradition since the first monstera. Daughter was the one who named them. I told her she should name this new crop but I think that the original, the one that we were supposed to have thrown out years ago and birthed nearly twenty new plants, I think her name is Cynthia.
