Last Sunday I was driving down Boyds Creek & I saw these two old ladies out in the yard. One was pointing to a particular plant in her flowerbed, and the other was peering at it & nodding sagely. They wore polyester pant suits, it looked like to me, with their hair sets & big-enough-to-notice-but-not-big-enough-to-be-tacky necklaces. I slowed, and resisted the urge to stop & watch them, or better yet, join them. They reminded me SO MUCH of my great-grandmother, my Mamaw. I was fortunate enough to have her next door until I was in high school. She loved her flowers. There were several flowerbeds surrounding her home, taking up most of the yard. She had a huge sage patch, and she grew dill, and tended the biggest aloe plant I have ever seen (For those of you that have seen mine, think x3). She also had this magnificent Christmas cactus that blossomed so hot pink it didn’t look real. Anyway, any time she had company, that was part of the ritual: touring the gardens. No matter how many times you’d previously visited, or how recently, you still had to observe the growth of her “cannies” (gigantic leafy red plants with enormous stalks I always thought were hideous), her prizewinning elephant ears that I could hide behind until I was ten, her millions of tulips, the weeping peach tree she was so proud…