Celebration of birth

My daughter, Magnolia (yes, we call her “Maggie”), turned 4 last Tuesday. While I was first tempted to bore you with a hokey analogy of tending my child like a garden (with food, water, affection, patience, and so forth) and watching her flourish, I have instead decided to share a birthday story with a little more substance, a story that’s a little more personal…

One of my favorite family details comes from my mother, Joan, now 59.

For Joan’s 8^th birthday, she was taken to a nursery and instructed to choose any plant she wanted. She chose a night-blooming cereus (also known as an orchid cactus or epiphyllum phyllanthus), a far cry from the daisies she was undoubtedly expected to select. But then, most of my mother’s actions have struck me as somewhat uncharted. This 8 year old wasn’t interested in the common beauty of lilies, roses and so forth, rather, she was attracted to this bizarre creeping cactus with thick waxy stems that flatten into a sort of lobed leaf shape and sprout massive creamy white flowers larger than my fist, which bloom only at night.

What is perhaps equally remarkable is that this very same plant is, to date, alive and well in southern California. And huge! With regular pruning, it stands about 6 feet tall, probably 3 feet across and over 51 years old.

A few years back I took a clipping to start at home. Within a year it produced strange winding shoots that nearly stretched the width of my living room. After introducing 2 wonderful kittens to our home, the new growth became a favored chew toy and the plant had to be given away, but I still regularly request cuttings from my mother – as unique gifts that always become a conversation centerpiece.

This entry was posted on April 15, 2006 at 8:14 pm and is filed under Today's gardening epiphany. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.