Well, mama said to me this morning, “Loulou, is there anything more exciting in spring than a beautiful bunch of seed packets just ready for planting?”
To which I replied, “Well, actually, I can think of several things…” but she cut me off and rushed out to the garden to put together her (tiny) greenhouse, called a serre in French, and that took about, oh, 30 minutes, and then she planted some lemon thyme because ours looks sort of pathetic, and then she potted two new little cactus for papa’s cactus garden that adorns the wall of the place you come into our house, and then she changed the soil for our maidenhair fern and then to finish off things, she strew (?) (threw?) (broadcast?) (scattered?) (dispersed?) rose fertilizer all around the roses that are beginning to put out their little leaves and then she fixed lunch and took a nap.
That, I understand.
But what’s funny is that sometimes mama has not planted anything in a certain spot and one day, voilá, some crazy plant springs up out of nowhere and starts to become one of the family. Like this creature below. Actually, a friend is always giving mama cacti that will grow into humongous sizes and mama says thank you, thank you, and then sort of leaves them out in the cold and they disappear but the friend is only trying to pay back for lemons and so now when the friend shows up one day, mama can say, “Look! Your beautiful cactus gift appeared next to our doorway and grew and greets us each morning and we love her.”
We have grown quite fond of Tinker Bells, which is what we named her.
Still, I wish mama would make my nip bed bigger…
Mama says this is a great poker hand, whatever that is.
