Tropical Dreams

I used to wonder where I got my fascination with tropical plants, which my mother never grew. When Daddy showed me this picture of Aunt Mac, his mother's sister, it suddenly all made sense:) I don't remember ever seeing Aunt Mac garden, so I'm not sure if these plants were her handiwork or her mother's. I KNOW they weren't Granny's. Not only did Granny have zero interest in gardening herself, but it made her mad for other people to do it. "The way they sweat in that yard, it oughta look like Bellingrath!" was her usual rant whenever she saw Mama and Daddy planting flowers. Granny's thinking was, why would anybody garden when they could be shopping?  I myself was a late bloomer, horticulturally speaking—no pun intended. I was in my thirties before I developed a yen to dig in the dirt. And now that Dave and I have our backyard "Fiesta Terrace," as a friend of ours calls it, we can't plant enough tropicals. We're already trying to figure out if we can somehow winter our banana plants, which were really small when we bought them but have become borderline ginormous over the summer. I think I love tropicals because they conjure images of exotic locales and sort of whisk you away from the ordinary. (No offense, geraniums, petunias, and impatiens.) When I look at that picture of Aunt Mac, I wonder if she was dreaming of someplace else, someplace where waves lap against the shore and palm trees rustle in the wind. I know I am.