A growing friendship

My friend Kathleen has a pristine garden. I try not to drool when I visit, but it is just so dang pretty. Every vine behaves and drapes seductively, every flower vibrates with color and fragrance, and every weed …well there are no weeds. The thing that confounds me is that Kathleen is an extremely busy woman and yet manages to create and maintain magazine worthy flowerbeds. What the heck?
There’s no getting around it…the woman has freakish plants skills. For instance, she has a cactus growing in her flower garden. A cactus in Minnesota. Growing. Healthy. Blooming! This is not a plant she brings in for the winter, or coddles in any way. She also has bamboo thriving behind her garage. It is so happy back there that it’s getting invasive. Again, bamboo is not a plant one normally associates with Minnesota. Today she gave me eight Morning Glory vines that sprouted un-beckoned near her sidewalk. Kathleen says she put in a Morning Glory four years ago and now it keeps coming back in small armies. My Morning Glories never come back. Never. I told her I was happy to take them, but it would be a death sentence for the plucky little vines. She laughed and said there would be more. That planted a smile on my face, and was the best part of my day.