Aloe, sweet aloe, you are such a healthful plant, so full of life-giving medicinal nectar. Aloe can alleviate pain from bug bites, help heal cuts, or give your face a soft glow... And so, it is only fitting that my aloe plant should be my mother-in-law's plant. Louise died of cancer just months after I met her, even though she had lived a very healthful life. She ran every day, always ate at the salad bar when she went to restaurants, took her vitamins, and tended her roses in a sunny community garden. She neither drank nor smoked, yet lung cancer claimed her anyway. Louise was a beautiful spirit, her bright blue eyes full of life.. cut too short.
Louise's husband brought us the aloe plant she had been growing outside the front door of her Laguna Beach condo. I accepted it into my Topanga garden readily, happy to have a piece of her garden, one of her plants, here with us. At first, I wasn't sure where I wanted to put it, so I left it out front near my door in its wooden bucket. Weeks passed, okay maybe months, and still it sat. But it looked pretty, so I left it. Until .. one day I realized it was "not to be moved"! The aloe's roots had broken through the bucket's wood bottom and rooted the plant firmly into the soil, just where it was! So it remains many years later. A much larger version of Louise's aloe in a pot.
Every time I walk out my front door and see that aloe, I think of Louise. I feel her presence reminding me to stay healthy, and keep her son healthy and happy, too.
(Presently, I am trying to think of a way to transport a cutting of this magnificent plant to my sister-in-law in Portland, without killing it. Any suggestions are welcome.)
