The salvaged plants

As children my sister and I learned quickly that one of the most exciting days of the week was garbage day, because you never knew what treasures would appear on the curbs of our middle-class neighborhood.  If you were especially fortunate, there would be a mostly dead plant.

I say fortunate because my mother loved nursing those dying little green things back to life and she was skilled at it.  We lugged home a potted palm once that remains, in my memory, a giant of a tree; my mother repotted it and it lived very happily for years behind my sister's kitchen chair - the receptacle for all the things she didn't want to eat for supper.

Mom couldn't resist the charm of needy plants, or even potentially needy plants.  Once I discovered a grocery store booklet on a shelf that explained how to grow a luscious indoor jungle out of food scraps and seeds.  At the time, this booklet was utterly captivating and made me think of lemon trees in the house and cucumber vines pinned along the ceiling, dripping fruit.

One does not simply grow out of the joy of sticking bits of your lunch in the dirt!  And this mild insanity much be hereditary since my middle daughter has joined the ranks of the afflicted.  Our windowsill holds three grapefruit trees and my Northern Ontario porch contains an enthusiastic mango tree( all courtesy of my daughter's penchant for making a hole and popping in a seed.

I can't point a finger, though, since alongside those grapefruit trees is an Aleppo pepper, a rosemary bush growing from a grocery store sprig, and a two foot tall avocado, all of which are my fault.  I'm also to blame for the African violet, which I was plant-sitting for a neighbor who said I may as well keep it since she didn't have luck with plants.  (Is there a sentence more likely to rustle the savior complex of the devout plant enthusiast?)  I couldn't let it go home to die, I insisted!

The little, unnamed succulent was salvaged (at $2.99!  What a bargain!) from the sale rack at the grocery store.  Oh, that we could all save a life for such a reasonable price!  The miniature orchid was carried hospital-bound as a gift, but the patient had been released, and the orchid just...never moved on from my shelf.  The spider plant was a cutting, and so was the other spider plant (And the third one, as well.  Shhhhh, hush now; it's fine, everything is fine.)

It spreads outward, this leafy desire of mine, into the garden filled with bulbs plucked from spoil heaps and peonies my father didn't want anymore and sweet peas grown from dried peas handed to me in a Ziploc bag from a friend.  At one point I had lettuce growing in the lawn, which is what happens if you don't pick your lettuce in time and it goes to seed and then you refuse to mow it down.  Lettuce makes such pretty lawn.

I have no logical reason for this.  I can't think why I do it, besides the tiny thrill of joy that comes from one, perfect, new leaf.