Heirloom Plants

In 2002, a few months after our dad died, sadly less than three years after our mother died, us four siblings decided to gather at our parents’ condo in Hot Springs, AR to go through their possessions to decide what things we each wanted before putting the condo up for sale.

I remember thinking before traveling over that the things I wanted the most were things that would spark childhood memories for me.  And the main thing that I knew I wanted was these four small carved elephants.  For me, they represented a fond memory having been given to each of us four kids by the missionary who had come to speak at our dad’s church.  I think he was a missionary to Africa and had specifically gotten them in these four progressively smaller sizes to match our sizes from oldest sister to youngest brother.  While one of each really belonged to all four of us, I was pleased my siblings agreed to let me have all four of them.

Before I drove over, my wife suggested I ask our three kids if there was anything they specifically wanted from Nanny and Granddaddy’s condo.  While my memories have faded as to what each child wanted me to bring back, one has stood the test of time and served as a constant reminder.  For it was our youngest son who asked that I bring back all their house plants that I could.  So to make sure I had enough room, I took the two back rows of seats out of my wife’s minivan so I could load up everything.

Since I don’t have a green thumb, some of those plants have not survived over the years.  But two in particular have.  The first is this snake plant, more commonly known as Mother-in-law’s tongue, just barely visible sitting to the right on the bench in the photo below of our sunroom.

When I brought it home, it was in this small rectangular planter.  It remained in our sunroom for years where it didn’t seem to grow much, no doubt rootbound in the small pot.  At my wife’s urging, I finally transplanted it to a much larger pot, and it has flourished ever since inside our house…

…although nowhere near as much as the ones we saw growing outdoors in Hawaii when my wife and I went there to celebrate our 40^th wedding anniversary.

But by and large, the granddaddy of all the plants that I brought home was this Monstera (plant by the pool railing).

This is a fairly common house plant but after we built our deck in 2007, I discovered that it could easily survive outdoors during our warm Memphis summer.  In fact, as you will see, it actually flourished no doubt from the abundance of summer sunshine.  As best as I can recall, this relatively small blue ceramic pot was what I brought it home in.

During its first summer outdoors, I discovered that excessive sunlight seemed to bleach out the leaves somewhat so for its second summer outside in 2008, I moved it to the deck so that with the trees behind it, it would be shaded for the often severely hot summer afternoons (on far left of deck).

Over the next several years, each winter, it would reside in our sunroom and then once all dangers of frost were over, I would carry it outside for its summer enjoyment until the fall, when I would carry back inside.

Sometime between 2008 and 2014, again at my wife’s urging, I transplanted it to one of the two existing green ceramic pots that we had on the deck to relieve its rootbound state.

With added root space, it really began to grow and by the time I rebuilt our deck in 2020, it had grown quite large.

Because part of the deck damage had occurred under the planters from water drainage, I built some planter plates to protect the new deck using left over pressure treated wood.

But by the end of the summer when it was time to move it indoors. I found that it had gotten almost too heavy to lift and carry in the house.  Then I had a brainstorm idea.  Why not put the planter plate on wheels?

I modified the design for this one planter plate adding caster wheels underneath and hiding them with a wraparound wooden apron.

With the planter now on wheels, transporting it back and forth from inside to outside became a much more manageable task.

But then disaster struck.

While out of town a huge storm came up with severely high winds.  In addition to blowing down part of our back fence, the strong winds blew the planter completely off the deck crashing it onto the concrete pool deck below.  Unfortunately, the wheels that I had installed to make it easier to transport into and out of the house also made it easier for the wind to drive it off the wooden deck.

After the storm, our son came over to assess the damage and found the planter broken.  He temporarily moved the plant and remaining bulk of the planter to another pot until we could return.  When we came home to see the damage, I could see that once again, the plant had become root bound.

Recognizing that it was now time to transplant it once again to a larger pot, I knew a larger ceramic pot would be so heavy that it would no longer be feasible to move it outside each summer.  It would just have to live indoors for the rest of its life.  But then I thought, how about a plastic pot?  And so that’s what I did.

In this last photo you can see that even in a larger pot, the plant practically hides the entire planter. And to keep it from blowing off the deck again, I plan to add a locking mechanism to the wheels.  Hopefully we will have many more years of enjoying this plant.

In fact, after the storm, my wife and I tried to figure out just how old the plant was.  She recalled seeing it in the den of my parents’ house in Memphis before we got married which would make it at least 45 years old.  But it could in fact be more than 50 years old.  That’s when I realized, we had an heirloom plant.

And maybe one day, our youngest son may want to inherit it as it is really thanks to him, that the plant made its way back to Memphis and has lived with us for so many years!