Jade (plant)

We meet many dear and lovely people at Poppy’s. And we learn a lot from these friends. Recently, while one of our friends was graciously sharing her expert plant care tips, she mentioned that jade plants’ blooms were edible. EDIBLE. What?? Our surprise and delight triggered something: only a few days later, our friend gifted us one of her large, healthy jade plants to be the Official Poppy’s Jade. We have full intentions of harvesting its blooms. Flowers for lunch, anyone?

Seeing the Official Poppy’s Jade reminded me of my first jade plant.
It was first grade and I was six. And parents were giving career presentations to our class. One boy’s parents presented on their family dairy operation, opening our minds to the world of feed and fodder and all things bovine. We had a policeman and a fireman. And my nutritionist mother handed out peanut butter-filled celery sticks dotted with raisins and taught us about Go foods, Glow foods, and Grow foods.

One mother, as a homemaker, brought her jade plant. And proceeded to break off its leaves, passing them out, one for each of us. We took the leaves and stuck their bottoms into the soil-filled milk cartons that we had saved from lunch, just as the mother showed us to. I took mine home. And put it in my bedroom windowsill where my kid self promptly forgot about it.

Somehow, with copious neglect, it managed to root itself and become my kid self’s pride and joy. So much so that my ten-year-old self decided that a rooted cutting from it would be a most appropriate wedding gift for my oldest brother and his new wife.

That wedding jade still lives, an elongated, drooping thing that just won’t die. Kept by my mother, after my brother and sister-in-law moved trans-nationally, we like to think that it’s the talisman behind their now-long-time marriage. It now resides on the back of my parent’s master bathroom toilet, where it likes to bloom.

-Miles