Usually, when cold weather arrives, we move our jade plants into the garage, where they spend the winter with who knows what thoughts — summer, shine, patience, glory, generations and generations of hands. Come spring, when we bring them out again, it takes them a few weeks to get going. Which way do we turn? What is that sound? Is that a squirrel? A worm? The swish of a broom? Ah, yes! We are jade plants.
This year, though, we didn’t move them into the garage. We moved them into the the coolest part of the house, near the tall south-facing windows, which, because of their age and inefficiency, allow greater changes in temperature and humidity, making the sun-room dining area the most natural outdoor-indoor part of the house. We keep other plants there year around — angel wing begonias, a prayer plant, a little cactus, and a lacy climbing asparagus fern — and they all thrive.
And so we will see how the jade plants do.
Autumn Detail
One last ladybug
cold upon
a leaf
about
to
fall
Poems, Slightly Used, October 13, 2009
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Categories: Everything and Nothing, Poems, Slightly Used
