Maybe forever?

Looking so forlorn 41 years ago, the jade tree from which I snipped a cutting was barely surviving under my mother's care. Lillian Griffith did not have an indoor green thumb, but her outdoor thumb was on fire. We had the most beautiful blue spruce trees, hedges and gardens on our property, but her house plants -- that was another matter. They were pretty much ignored, covered in dust and watered....whenever....or not. Jade trees can take a great deal of abuse and these scrawny sticks, languishing half-dead in a pot in her kitchen window, cried out for an intervention. There they sat, stunted.

I decided to grab a cutting all those many years ago before I moved to TO. That jade tree grew into a fabulous specimen. It got bigger and bigger and bigger. I gave away cuttings over the years to all my children. Their plants grew and grew and grew. All were thriving. Then came the day when we moved to Calgary. The original jade tree was huge and not portable. Even if we had managed to lug it into the moving van, it would not have survived the thousands of miles to Calgary. Luckily, my step-son Scott took "Gram's" jade tree to live with him. I almost cried as I watched it roll down the hall on a dorry to his car.

But before that tree departed, I again snipped two more cuttings, wrapped them in wet paper towel and popped them into my carry-on. They arrived in good form. After sitting them in water for a couple of months, they grew roots long enough for planting. That's what I was doing in Canadian Tire the other day -- buying pots and soil to plant them.

One went to daughter Susanne in Cochrane and the other now sits here with me. My mother's jade tree lives on.