Childhood plant memories

Title: Childhood plant memories
I love your (and Laura's) childhood remembrances of Amaryllis belladonna, as I grew up with those "nekkid ladies" as well.

It put me back to about 10 years old,  when my mother had a large Phormium tenax growing near our swing.  Now this swing was strung from two mature sycamores and could really swing. In the fall we would rake the leaves into a high pile and cut two flax leaves, even though these were tough and hard to cut.  We would (adhesive) tape the leaves to our arms, swing as high as we could, and JUMP, mightily flapping our "wings" all the way down into the leaves. Even though it sounds a little simple-minded now, I assure you it was considered "the adventure of the neighborhood" in the early 1940s,
Pomona, CA.

Of course, like Kerrie, we could then run through the sprinklers in our underwear eating the eugenia berries!  These were Syzygium, and not true Eugenia; it's a wonder we're not all dead!

Does anyone else have childhood memories of what you did with plants??

Jan Smithen, Upland, CA
Sunset, Zone 19



On 6/8/05 7:10 PM, pkssreid@comcast.net wrote

Ahhhhh Amaryllis belladonna - what a poignant flower.  I have these very photographic memories of my grandmother's backyard and the bed along the side of her house planted with these fragrant beauties, which, being from Texas, she called "Nekkid Ladies."  There was also a rampant overgrowth of spearmint in a nearby bed under the spare bedroom window, and with scent being the sense most closely tied to memory, you can imagine all the childhood memories conjured up by even the thought of that bright green bed and the fantastic pink lilies sprouting from bare ground nearby.  I'm six again, and the crabapples aren't ripe, but we're climbing the tree and eating them anyway, and after that we're going to run through the sprinklers in our underwear!
Cheers!
Karrie Reid
Folsom Foothill Gardener
Zone 9
----- Original Message -----
From: Laura Cooper Nick Taggart <mailto:coopertaggart@earthlink.net>  
To: pkssreid@comcast.net
Cc: medit-plants <mailto:medit-plants@ucdavis.edu>  
Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2005 7:19 PM
Subject: Re: favorite Medit bulbs

Naked Ladies, Amaryllus belladonna, who can resist such a sexy name. I love the pink flowers, their smell, their persistence in old gardens, coming up in gardens otherwise abandoned, or as in my garden, coming up as a reminder of the garden that was, back in 1921 when our house was built. When I first walked up the long staircase from the street to the house, they were almost the only thing still growing, and I felt like the girl in "The Secret Garden": in this hidden abandoned place a garden had been and a garden would be again.

I don't even mind the dead leaves anymore.

Laura Cooper
Los Angeles (Glassell park to be exact)

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