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Definition Of Upcycling

with Uncle Colin

I’ve spent my entire life around plants.  I grew up on a Christmas tree farm that was once a giant fruit tree orchard. Growing up, I imagine that we lived in a forest.  In our backyard grew Christmas trees.  In the side yard, fields of blueberries belonging to my neighbors.  The other side yard had even more Christmas trees and my father’s vegetable garden.  We had an abundance of flowers in the front yard along with several fruit trees.  Beyond our immediate vision were fields of strawberries, raspberries, pumpkins….if you can imagine it, my neighbors grew it.

My father is the kind of person that can grow just about anything— flowers, trees, you name it.  The man has an amazing vegetable garden every year that grows just about everything imaginable.  Corn, squash (A LOT of squash!), tomatos, cucumbers, green beans, onions, potatoes, lettuce…EVERYTHING.  My mother used to joke that she got him to agree to have kids by saying they would pick the beans for him.  My father is still disappointed by the amount of beans us kids picked.  He’s hoping the next generation will better pickers!

My mother, on the other hand, was the opposite.  Houseplants that made their way into our home would often perish quickly despite my mom’s attention to them.  Mom loved flowers…they just didn’t seem to love her.  They DID love my aunt Dee though.  Mom often despaired at her own gardening ability and wished she had my aunt’s magic green thumb.  My aunt has a tiny little postage stamp of a yard and always manages to cultivate the most beautiful blooms from it.  The one plant my mother managed to keep alive for over a month (on her own, without dad’s help mind you) was a rubber plant that sat out on our dinette porch.  I remember my mom freaking out one day when I accidentally broke a leaf off.  She said it was the only g-d plant that she has been able to keep alive for a decent amount of time and that she didn’t need my help in killing it.  It’s a funny memory now, but I remember being scared to death when it happened.