Going Home … for an Heirloom
Flowering Pomegranate blossom from the Home PlaceThough I was born and have lived most of my life in North Carolina, I did live for a brief time across the state line in Virginia. When I was only two, my mom got the news that her mother was terminally ill, so my parents packed up and eventually we moved to my mother’s “home place” to help take care of my grandmother and to help my granddaddy with the farm. Since my grandmother died before I was three years old, I only have faint recollections of her and, so, I have always hungered for any links to or stories about her.
Among the things I know about her are that she was a great, Southern cook and she also loved to grow flowers and plants like I do. One of her prized plants was an old Flowering Pomegranate bush. If you aren’t familiar with it (I have only seen a few others in my fifty-some odd years), its woody branches have waxy leaves and it also has small buds that pop open into orange flowers that resemble small carnations. When it is in full bloom, it looks like a Christmas tree adorned with beautiful sunset orange buds and blooms. As the story goes, when my grandmother was visiting some friends in Newport News, she got a cutting from a bush there and brought it back to the farm and rooted it. Over the years her beautiful bush has been threatened on several occasions but it has always survived.
Actually, it has more than survived. When I was in Virginia with my parents last weekend, we rode by the old home place and there my grandmother’s bush stood in all its glory. It was ablaze with color and just as beautiful as I remembered. I don’t know what it is about a plant with a story, but I am often enchanted by both.
My mother’s home place belongs to her sister’s children now and as luck would have it, one of them was “home” and he and his (beautiful) fiancée were working in their organic garden. We chatted and caught up a little bit and I asked if I could get some cuttings from the old Pomegranate bush. They invited me to help myself and so I did. I clipped some blossoms to take home and enjoy over the next few days and I clipped 13 sprigs of new growth to try to root. I haven’t been as excited about cultivating some new plants in a long time. After keeping my cuttings in water for several days, today I took them outside and potted them. I used some rooting hormone to increase the likelihood that new roots will sprout from my heirloom cuttings. Now, I will keep them moist and in a shady spot for the next few weeks. In a month or a little more, I hope to see the evidence that my cuttings are taking root. At the moment, I feel like an expectant parent anxiously awaiting the arrival of a new baby (actually maybe 13 babies).
My Grandmother’s Flowering Pomegranate BushI greatly enjoyed the visit with my cousin and his fiancée, as well as his sister and her three precious little girls. There’s just always something very special about going home … returning to your “roots,” reconnecting with your kin, and remembering the folks and the times gone by. I was grateful for the chance to soak up a little of it all. Now if my cuttings will just root, I can pass along a little of the past to my mother, my sister and her daughter, and my daughter and her children … hopefully new plants that are a piece of the prolific bush my grandmother started so many years ago along with the story about her and how they came to be. I am so pleased to remember the past and to bring it with us into the future … what a beautiful heirloom!
Have any special plants that you have gotten from friends or family members? I’d love to hear about them and perhaps to get a sprout or a cutting if you are willing to share. My favorite plants are the ones that are passed along from family member to family member or from friend to friend … we know them as “pass-along” plants and they all carry a story with them 🙂
From my garden to yours,
Carolina Carol
CLOSE TO THE LAND 