Geraniums and Mama Grande

Almost anything will grow in Southern California. We may be experiencing a drought, but some plants just keep on growing and giving. I think everyone on our block has a gardener. The only one I see mowing his own lawn is the teacher across the street, and he does it primarily to get some exercise, he says.

I think some of my favorite flowering plants are the geraniums. They thrive even if neglected. But my fondness for geraniums goes back to when I was a child and my great-grandmother had all the different colors of geraniums in pots. Pots for plants in those days were old tin cans that had a hole or two on the bottom. Coffee cans were the prized ones, but the cans from other things worked, too. I remember some of the neighbor ladies admiring her geraniums and commenting, “Tiene muy buena mano la abuelita, ¿verdad?” referring to my Mama Grande's "good hand" for making things grow. And then they would walk away with a rooted plant in one of those cans, and pay her with a promise to save their coffee cans for her.



Since those childhood days, I have read and experienced that geraniums will root and thrive with little care. But I prefer to believe that my great-grand abuela really had “a very good hand” for making things grow. La Abuelita, Mamá Grande, or Ma Grande were some of the names by which I knew her. This great lady who had a way with the geraniums, was great at recycling (we had not heard the term back then), and just "made-do" with what ever was available. She had known many hard times in her life, yet lived to be 104 years old! Some of my aunts and uncles liked to explain her longevity to the fact that she liked a shot of hard liquor now and then, and that she walked and walked everywhere she needed to be. Now our doctors admonish us to do exercise for our health. And those highly-funded studies reveal that drinking red wine daily is good for us. How did Ma Grande know to do that since she had very little formal education and was never sick.