Last winter I had some pansies growing, along with some parsley and rosemary.

This fall I have mint, periwinkles, and kalanchoe.

My great-grandmother had plants in coffee cans on her porch. My grandmother, too. They didn’t go buy them from the Home Depot. They shared with each other and with neighbors and friends. My grandmother even smuggled a jade plant home from Canada once in my PawPaw’s boot. I think there is a piece of it growing on my mother’s porch today.

They didn’t buy potting  mix in colorful bags, either. They went into the woods and dug up “leaf mold” to put in the cans.

There’s no leaf mold in Torreón. But there is a Home Depot.

I sure do enjoy the convenience. I went and loaded up with a palm, a closet plant, an “ivy,” called “teléfono” here, and a pink arrrowhead vine for the balcony, periwinkles and kalanchoes for the back patio.

A few days after this potting event, I was in the counseling office at school. There was a huge, beautiful variegated schefflera there. I admired it. The next day, I had an email from the assistant telling me that I could have a piece of it.

Wow! What a thrill. Now I’m just waiting for it to make roots so I can put it in it’s own pot.

I stole four-o’clock seeds. There’s a huge plant growing down the street, one with varied colors of orange and pink. From my earliest memories my mother grew pink four-o’clocks.  I intend to steal more plants from my neighbors. There’s  baby’s tears  growing through a fence onto the sidewalk–it won’t be difficult to filch some. I bought lettuce and parsley seeds to grow on the patio.

The urge to grow things is bred in me. It can’t be denied, and it must be answered. There’a satisfaction in it, a familiarity  that comforts me deeply.