The mad gardener relocated from Tennessee to California and brought a few plants, one tree named Benji (a ficus benjamina), one plant was a corn plant named franklin, and the fern (Boston) was called Kennedy.

Benji was known as the town gossip!

The fern came only to be disappointed when he found out most of the other ferns were raised in Florida. Franklin was surprised that he had to adjust to California weather.

Benji was shocked when he realized that the long road trip caused him to lose most of his leaves. You can’t move a benjamina around to different locations without some consequences.

The plants actually live with the Litwinskis in Mission Viejo and visit me for a week or so at a time.

I also brought Rhodes (a dracena marginata). He has a red stripe down his leaf and is a retired army sergeant still fighting somewhere or another.

One day when Benji was taking a stroll, he met a fine young cineraria named candy stripe Louise who was in love with a poinsettia. She was suspicious when he was half pink and half red. She suspected he had been fooling around. As a child, he told me, he was called pinky. The father only visited in December.

Not wanting to get involved, he eventually met a schephalera called the umbrella tree. They went out for a couple of months and it started to look serious when she introduced him to her cousin called scarce. He seldom came to visit. Meanwhile, Rhodes was suspicious of every plant he never knew first.

Rhodes became upset when the umbrella tree ran away from the service by running off to Canada. He thought he could buy pills cheaper, but he didn’t say what kind.

Benji came to visit me at a bingo game. He couldn’t stand one player who constantly complained that she was warm, but she always wore a shawl. Either she is a member of the hard of hearing club or just an irritating person.

Meanwhile, Benji came home to find franklin’s leaves were half green and half yellow. Thinking he did not get enough water, Rhodes gave him green food coloring while Benji was gone. Rhodes had a tape of summer baseball and franklin thought it was fall and his leaves started to turn yellow. The truth is that his leaves will turn in winter when he does not have enough water.

Rhodes could not understand and he went to his room to think about it. When he had the radio on, he heard Lance Armstrong and his fiancés were separating. Somehow, it seems that love affairs don’t last very long. Good thing he can’t take love very seriously.

I explained to Benji that he was being too critical. He said that he decided to give bingo another chance. He saw a foreigner who passed herself off as an old timer from America. Yet her English as an old timer was somewhat modicum to say the least. She took two cards and her excuse was that she didn’t know any better.

She could win with one or the other. She was the secretary of the hard of hearing club, if you know what i mean.

I told Benji he didn’t have to attend anymore. At least the cooking class was something else. You had a selection of either Mexican or Pilipino, and on occasion American food. Their recipes were quite different, but food is food.

I brought in a professional to watch them every two weeks. He wasn’t very familiar with Mr. Congo, a Venus fly trap, who had an appetite for flies. He couldn’t handle a whole one, so we almost lost Mr. Congo.

Mr. Congo was greedy and thought he could handle the whole fly and almost choked to death. I think greed is a qualification for a few patients.