Once upon a time, I lived in a beautiful place called SW Florida. At one time, I worked at a garden center, where I was able to get snips and bits of this and that. My yard was full of beautiful plants. One of my proudest achievements was growing an epiphyllum from a tiny piece of leaf that had broken off and fallen on the ground in the garden center greenhouse.
It took 3 years to bloom, and I had forgotten what color it was supposed to be. It turned out to be a beautiful fuschia pink. It bloomed every year thereafter, until it somehow started to die. I managed to keep a small part of it alive, but that tiny piece just got sicker and sicker and today, it rotted away to nothing.
That's just one in a long string of my plants that have died since I got to Gainesville. Some succumbed to pests and some to diseases, but losing this one broke my heart all over again.
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| My beautiful Thanksgiving cactus, now dead |
I already have other beautiful plants, but there is something about the plants that died that just brings home just how much I've lost, and even the tiniest thing that I lose now hurts as if someone stabbed me in the heart.
I literally gave away hundreds of plants over the years, and I still give away as many as I can grow. I just miss my big oak trees and my purple leaf plum and my fruit trees that gave me so much bounty through the years. I even miss having to bring in 200 container plants from cold and storms and figure out where on earth to put them all. I never used my dining room table for eating. I only saved it to keep the plants on when they had to be protected. Every year I'd threaten to give them all away, and I would give away a lot of them, but I would always have more the next year, and once again, my house, porch and garage would be packed with them during cold snaps and storms.
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| My Gorgeous Clivia, almost killed by snails |
I went back to my house and dug up many of my plants and put them into my ex-roommate's yard. I hear most of those are dead now, save the most hardy of them that survive neglect. Luckily, a nice person took some of them to the yard across the street and is taking good care of them.
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| Plants in Jillaurie's Yard |
I love my little yard here, don't get me wrong. I love the courtyard, where I sit in the mornings with my coffee and make dream plans in my head for all the wonderful fruits and vegetables I'm going to grow in there. I love the hibiscus that is so tall it grows over my courtyard wall and welcomes me to the day with beautiful blooms. I love the little strips outside the wall where I can plant my flowers and slip in a few edible ornamentals as well. I love my living room windows, where the sun pours in on those plants that need a lot more shade than I currently have. I'm grateful for everything I've been blessed with here.
But I still miss my big yard with the gorgeous oaks and the abundant flowers. I guess I always will.
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