My Sister Who Loved Leaves And Very Tiny Flowers

Errr...sidewalk in front of our walled house.

My mother was a gardener. She filled our yard with so many plants, trees and bushes that our house was not visible from the street. The photo on the left was taken during the early stages of our garden. There were palm trees, mango trees, bananas, an acacia tree, a variety of fruit trees like avocado, santol, star apple, guava, atis, and banaba (cherimoya). We had plots of casava, yams and sweet potatoes; a grove of sugarcane, and of course orchids and other flowering plants. We had vegetables growing among flowering plants. Her love for gardening and her green thumb was inherited by my sisters and the older of my two elder brothers. The younger of my elder brothers just loves taking photographs of trees, flowers and plants. One of our chores was to tend to the garden. My role was to pump the water from the well and carry the heavy buckets of water for my sisters to sprinkle the plots with a can by hand. We did not use a hose. The photo above is the front of our house where I grew up, this is outside the wall and gate (by the electric post). The garden spilled into the sidewalk, er, there is no more sidewalk! Below are some plant leaves and flowers I took of the potted garden in my sister Mercedes's house. These were plants that Leah loved because of their leaves.

I am not so fond of flowers. Oh I mean I love flowers. I love filling my house with flowers on vases. But I love leaves and tree trunks, bark and twigs. I love plants with miniature flowers, in fact the smaller the flower, the better. I actually love weeds with very tiny flowers that may only be examined with a magnifying glass. When my children were young, they thought I looked so weird kneeling in the yard examining miniature weed flowers. They are used to me by now. :)

So I was thrilled when one day, while my eldest sister and I were walking through her potted garden and yard, she told me that my sister Leah loved plants and trees because...

of their leaves and tiny flowers!

(The blue flower is about a third the size of the nail nail of my little finger.)

 Ah, Inday Leah loved wild plants and trees too and flowers. She had beautiful flowers and wild plants and trees in her farm. I never had the chance to visit her farm...

Perhaps, someday.