HOUSEPLANTS

          I wonder how many of my friends have house plants. I lie in the tub looking at a small Elephant Ear in a plastic milk jug that John got free when he placed his annual Burpee Seed order.  (They also sent him a blueberry bush and a potted palm that are part of his container garden, outside.)

          I grew up in what is now called a Midcentury Modern house, with planters built into the terrazzo floors.  I didn't know until recently that the twining fig that still thrives there had been a houseplant of my grandmother's before the house was built in 1955. That amazing plant twines up around windows and spreads across the ceiling, held up by hooks my dad screwed into the ceiling many years ago.

          In an adjacent planter huge peace plants reach up toward skylights making for a tight squeeze when you come in the front door. The third planter is fallow, but for tiny creepers of split-leaf elephant ears sneaking in from a planter outside.

          The first houseplants I remember, after I moved away from home, are the coleuses Roger and I had in Berkeley in the early 1970s, tropical plants that come in various shades of red, yellow and purple.  I remember a photo of me with long hair, holding Junior, Roger's and my black and white Manx. The hanging coleus takes up most of the frame. The cat "ran away" after we had him neutered. Roger thought UC medical students nabbed him.  I don't know what became of the plant, or the wandering Jew that flourished in a sunny window, or the African violet that used to grow on Roger's horse-trough desk.

          One of my favorite houseplants was a Boston fern. It perched on a white octagonal column.  I used to pretend I was the wind, and ruffle it, then vacuum up the little brown leaves that fell from its fronds.  When I moved from Los Angeles to Oakhurst I gave it to my parents who planted it up in their shady canyon. I always forget, when I visit, to see if it's still there. I got another one when we built our house in 2000. It lived for ten years in my sunny bathroom. My darling Abyssinian Amber, who was strictly an indoor cat, used to lie under its feathery fronds. I think this somehow satisfied her primal instincts.

          When I met John, in 1992, he had a small corn plant that had belonged to his mom in Iowa. He took it to Texas where it lived many years, then to California. It lived with us in YLP, then Kirk's house, and our house on Quartz Mountain, where it sprouted new growth.  Now it occupies a window in the dining room.  I love stroking the sleek long leaves, when I give it a drink, every week.

          We had over forty houseplants when we moved from California. Most of them found homes with friends. John managed to bring six with him in the U-Haul. The vegetable garden was left behind, as were the natural plants – wildflowers, trees, shrubs, and vines that I miss daily.

          I'm learning to love the trees of Texas, the flowering crepe myrtles, and the gnarly old oaks.  Outside the post office a sycamore struggles to survive. The top is dying but new sprouts push out from lower limbs. I wish I could be in charge of this tree. I would get someone to trim it and fertilize it. I would ask that the grass around its base be weeded and watered.  I would like to sit under that tree and gaze up at the sky. But judging from the window that's been boarded up for six-months and weeds sprouting in the planters I know my wish to see the sycamore thrive is just a dream.