my new year’s plant

If there’s a plant that says New Year’s Day to me, it’s the com­mon jade plant, Cras­sula ovata. The rea­son why is a lit­tle embar­rass­ing, and I’m trust­ing you not to tell any­one else.

Grow­ing up, my fam­ily would spend the morn­ing of New Year’s Day gath­ered around the tele­vi­sion set­ting, watch­ing the Rose Parade. Over­taken by mis­guided jags of inspi­ra­tion, I’d make my own lit­tle parade floats out of lit­tle card­board boxes and what­ever flow­ers were available.

jadeflowers

My fam­ily lived in the same val­ley as Pasadena, though inland a few miles. The two loca­tions essen­tially shared the same cli­mate pro­file, some­thing around Zone 9B. Don’t believe the pro­pa­ganda about the Pasadena area hav­ing gar­gan­tuan fields of roses bloom­ing every­where in Jan­u­ary. Yes, you’ll find roses, but not in the same num­ber as other flowers.

Instead, at my par­ents’, the plant that was depend­ably cov­ered with flow­ers on New Year’s was the jade plant. They had a cou­ple plants in the back yard that were about as tall as I was, and they sup­plied more than enough lit­tle starry white flow­ers to com­pletely cover my artis­tic creations.

jadeplant

Now, all grown up, I have a jade in the front yard. This year, with the bizarrely warm fall we had, the plant was con­fused and started bloom­ing in Novem­ber. Here’s how it looked yes­ter­day. Not totally cov­ered in flow­ers, but with plenty of flow­ers to go around–unless some­one needs to build a major float.

So, with that photo, let me wish you a happy New Year’s! May 2009 bring you piles of flow­ers and inter­est­ing plants and good times with peo­ple who care deeply for you!

January 01 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: • • • • | 7 Comments »