Nearly killed my sago. The palm, a survivor of the Mesozoic Age, almost didn't survive me. A Florida cracker, I should have known how to grow it. Anyway, the sago's not really a palm.
Turned wrinkled and yellow just like one, though, right on my front porch. I was scared Joanne, my friend, a nurse and green thumb neighbor, would ask about its health, so I hid the sago's withered body on my back porch, ready for the trash truck on Tuesday.
Yet during what I thought to be the sago's final phase, a circle of new feathery fronds sprouted from the top of its trunk. Looked like a bunch of quill pens in an ink well. So I dragged it back up to the front porch, where it lives today, all resurrected and green, waiting for an approving eye from Nurse Joanne making her neighborly rounds.
Judy, another friend, never saw the sago. That's because I generally wind up at her house. Last time I was there, she asked me to help pick weeds from her bed of impatiens and put them in the bag in the garage. But her garage door broke. The door wouldn't go up and the door wouldn't go down. Just like my creaky, arthritic knees will do when Judy asks me to be her personal weed witch again.
Still, there's a lot to Judy. Like Joanne, whom you met, and like Sue and Terry, whom you will, Judy's smart. Math smart. She reads algebra books the way I read Evanovich. In a bout with the blues a few years ago, she said the smartest thing I ever heard:
"I was happier in denial."
Q.E.D., Judy.
My other green thumb friend is Sue. She grows, among other things, lavender, rosemary and poison ivy. Brushing by the latter one day, Sue soon erupted with red bumps and blisters. Each one, I thought, a tiny badge of courage for such a feisty and loving gardener.
What I don't understand is how Sue, a Smith college grad, failed to ID poison ivy growing in her garden, when I, barely a grad of Hometown U., can eyeball those three leaves as easy as spotting mold on mayonnaise.
On the other hand, Sue plays piano better than me and reads more than me. Hangs bird feeders in her yard and grows bamboo in her kitchen. Probably feeds the homeless behind my back.
Last, there's Terry. She complains, moans and cries. My kind of woman. Diagnosed with cancer, Terry's a fighter, especially for the poor and disenfranchised. Most likely, ever since they knew they weren't wanted.
Still, I checked it out anyway with her college roommate, Trudy, who had flown in from Israel to visit. We were all eating lunch at the Market on North Blount Street and I figured in front of Joanne, Judy, Sue, Terry and me, Trudy would give a straight-up answer. So I asked:
"Was Terry a fighter back in college while we all were dancing and drinking beer?"
"Yes," Trudy said. "Terry's always fought for the little guy. Even then."
A few of us take Terry for a walk around Lake Lynn now and then and, as you might guess, no poison ivy growing there would dare touch Terry. At least not the way Terry has touched us.
Truth is, I had only one friend before moving to Raleigh. That's because I didn't know how to make more. But Raleigh's taught me the secret: listen hard and laugh easy. And be sure to publish your friends' peccadilloes in your "Our Lives" column, then leave town.
