Grandma's Watering Can

Grandmother’s Watering Can by Wayne Dixon My Grandmother lived for her garden and plants of all kinds. I remember how upset she was when I accidently hoed up her iris rhizomes thinking I was doing her a favor by removing weeds. “It will take two years for them to bloom again,” she said. “Don’t hoe any more weeds,” she insisted. It was one of the very few times I saw her angry. She nurtured her plants from slips, as she called them, and was somewhat of an expert at starting new plants in pots which she kept under her grape arbor behind her white-frame house. One had to be careful walking around not to knock over one of her precious potted succulents and cacti. She would water them by hand with her omnipresent watering can. I do not remember her ever using a hose. She always filled her watering can from the faucet and laboriously carried it from plant to plant, front yard or back. They would reward her from time to time with extravagant blooms. I still have some of my Grandmother’s plants, transplanted over the miles and times from her house to mine. There were the hen and chicken succulents, expanding like their name, over the pots. I, too, have jade plants all over the yard, some of them started from a single leaf, bringing me prosperity and good luck. Her baby-tear moss has died, unable to tolerate Fresno’s heat. Some plants, such as her purple flowering Mexican sage, I’ve obtained from nurseries in her memory and that of my growing up years. And now I even have a watering can! What would my Grandmother think of that?