Grandma's Garden of Ferns
Kit Kurtz
At our home in Kona the bedrooms are on the lower floor. In recent years I would get Mom into her wheel chair in the morning and go out the side door facing a lava rock wall to turn and push her up the ramp. She loved the turn where there was a platform overlooking the garden. Gardens were one of her joys. Then we would proceed between the side garden and the garage. This side garden was, as many such gardens are, a stepchild, half-filled with monstera, with four-foot leaves growing six feet tall. The lower level had a little soil but for years nothing would ever grow there.
About three years ago I decided to pull out all the monstera and make room for agapanthus, ginger, and beautiful hybrid heliconia. Mom particularly loved the Blue Daze, which overflowed the lava boulders. The best part was that, with the monstera gone, a few ferns began to grow by the lower path. Mom and I eagerly watched this new life that God planted. She delighted in the morning entry to her fern garden. Recently we counted as many as eight different varieties of ferns. |