Zoe has been hard at work in the office. Filing reports. Interviewing interns. Making phone calls.
Okay, I may have caught her napping. But she works so hard!
Or, you know, not.
Simone even went up to her to make sure she's still breathing. To everyone's relief, she was.
Zoe's office is the Booze Hound Bar and Grill on our sun porch. When we were vacationing in Rhode Island one year to see the mansions and visit Green Animals, we stayed at a B&B. It was a lovely old gingerbread Victorian. I enjoyed strolling throughout the many parlors and hallways, beautifully restored with intricately layered William Morris wallpapers. In the corner of the elegant dining room was an exotic plant. The likes of which I'd never seen. At breakfast, I queried the hostess as to it's name and origin.
*That's a Sharron Barrett Plant Friend sticking out of the top. And a watering ball from my friend, Tatia Johnson. And a bunny cling from the side from my mother. Hoarders? No. We're collectors.
She blushed. The plant was the ill gotten gain of her husband on a trip to Monticello. When he wasn't you know, writing constitutions or being President, Jefferson was a horticulturalist. He collected plants all over the world and brought them back to his greenhouses in Virginia to propagate. This was a snippet of one of those treasures.
She asked me if I'd like a piece to take home. And gave me a cutting as we left to catch our plane. I guess she thought if I became a co-conspiritor that I wouldn't turn her over to authorities.
We just call it the Monticello plant. Or the Jefferson plant. It's easy to grow. Likes bright indirect sunlight and water once a week. No food. It blooms several times a year. And in the years we have had it, it has grown all the way from a four inch trimming to the floor. It has started to snake its way under Zoe's, er, "desk".
So we, in turn, have been cutting it off and giving it away to friends.
And this is also hanging from it. Because it needs lots of things to amuse it. That's the only downfall of the plant apparently.
Our friend, Keith Renard gave the Lollypop Baby to us years ago. He's getting married this November. last week, we gave them a potted piece of the Monticello plant.
Stollen property from a landmark estate. Isn't that what Martha Stuart says in her wedding magazine is the perfect gift for the bride to be?
