My Mother's Day special GIFT....

Did I tell you that I LOVE Canna Lilies??  Perhaps these were my first flowers ever to see as a youth in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) - they grew in Colombo and they grew in the Hill Country too.  I missed them very much.  So - Nando and Laxmi planted some 50 Canna Lily bulbs for Mother's Day outside my window.  Up in the Northeast these are VERY tricky to grow.  Nando started with 10 bulbs and they have to be dug up in Fall or they WILL freeze and die.  He puts them in the basement, then divides them and plants again in Spring - now he has 50 bulbs.  It's a lot of work!!!

Let me add a photo from last year:

But there's MORE - they also ordered (and were disappointed it hadn't yet arrived) some Flowering Yucca plants.  In Mexico we EAT the flowers and they make a delicious meat-like meal.   Luckily, this plant (although a succulent) does survive our harsh winters.   Meanwhile, here is a photo of how they should look:

I cannot tell you how MUCH I still miss my Plantain Tree (which we had in Florida) and my Guava Tree, my ginger plant, and even though it never bloomed in Florida - I miss my Plumeria "tree" (we called these temple trees in Sri Lanka).  In Florida in our garden I also planted various mango pits that grew well and were beautiful foliage but never bore fruit, pineapple plants (ditto).  I planted curry leaf plant and that was my favourtite - I could just go outside to pluck the leaves when wanting to make a curry.  The year before we left Florida, we bought a Lychee tree in Key West.  We knew it would never survive up here in the north, so we gave it to our dear Chinese friends.

We also planted VARIOUS avocado trees there in Florida - and I suppose we did not stay long enough to see them bear fruit.  When I think of all beautiful tropical plants I had in Sri Lanka and miss so dearly - passion fruit, rambutan, jak fruit, durian, woodapple, pawpaw (papaya).  We even had a few TEA bushes in our yard in Colombo (although they prefer the cooler climate of the Hill Country) - we could pick the "two leaves and a bud" and make our own tea.  I miss getting back to nature so much - everything we wanted was just there in the garden.  My Uncle Tiger had a saying that Sri Lanka was so fertile that if you PLANT a broom - by morning SURELY there would be 10 little whisk-brooms sprouting up.

There is one plant that grows wild up here called "ramp" - it is in the onion & garlic family - you can cut it and slice up to add flavour to stews and salads.