No green thumb on MY hand!

My mother raised beautiful violets. She had 'the gift' when it came to plants. Her youngest daughter, however, did not receive that gift. In fact, her house is where most plants come to die. Who knows how many violets I've been given during hospital stays or as gifts that met the same slow death. It wasn’t that I was TRYING to kill them...

So, thanks to Mother’s instructions, I would carefully water the violets in the proper way and would place them to enjoy their best light. But each ill-fated violet was sort of pitiful when the last bloom would fall off. Just like all the others, the plant would sit there. No growth. No more blooms. Each one was just another fuzzy-leaved green plant that looked like it may have smoked cigarettes when it was younger because it's growth was so very stunted.

My hairdresser, Kirk Hemboldt, visited me at at the hospital (after my knee replacement) while I was 'under the influence' of the morphine in my pain pump. To everyone who came in my room to visit, my daughter tells me I’d hold up the button and instruct everyone to “...say hello to my little friend!” I’d never remember much of any conversation after that.

Now Kirk and I have been friends for a very long time, and we talk about all sorts of things. All sorts! So who knows what I might have said to him in that hospital room. I do remember his gift…a violet filled with blooms in a beautiful little dish. Obviously, in all the things we’d talk about over the years, I’d never told him I was a serial plant murderer. If I had, I’m sure he’d never have given me custody of that innocent, sweet violet! It really was beautiful, and I knew it would eventually meet the same fate as every other violet I’d known.

Well, I think my luck may be changing! This morning as I dutifully watered my houseplants (that always seem to be hanging on for dear life) I noticed a single bloom on my violet! I was so excited that I took a picture of it! This was a FIRST for me! That was this morning. Tonight, I checked it before crawling into bed and it’s still there! Miracles never cease!

One of my favorite comedians is Mitch Hedberg. He once said, “All my silk plants died because I forgot to pretend to water them.”

That sounds like a line I need to borrow for my stand-up comedy routine...giving Hedberg credit for it, of course.



Remember, if you have a pulse, you have a purpose…so make your life count!