When my mom came over to my house after visiting our friends Eddie and Sharyn down in Florida and handed me a Saran-Wrapped package, declaring "I brought you cuttings," I was a little confused. I mean, they look like...branches. I didn't really understand why they were something that my mom might want to carry through airports. But after a little Googling I realized that they're the loveliest gift ever: they're basically a way to create little plant "children".

Aww.

I love this idea, mostly because I remember where each and every plant in our garden came from, and it's so cool to imagine that in a few years I'll be able to look at these and know that their "parents" are growing in my faraway friends' home (theoretically, I mean; we're talking Remedial Gardener over here, and these plants will need a bit more than a wish and a prayer to make it through alive).

Not all plants will grow from cuttings, but Sharyn assured me that this particular plant - a Mexican petunia - grows "like wildfire" (and can apparently even grow in rainless, concrete parking lots), so I suppose that's a good start.

All weekend I wandered around in this sort of happiness-haze, wearing garden gloves and scooping dirt and saying things to Kendrick like "Who KNEW? I mean really...who knew?!" And he was sort of confused by my need to announce (over and over) how amazed I was by the fact that I was enjoying something that was way, way outside the realm of anything I would have ever thought I'd enjoy...but seriously.

WHO KNEW?

I never in a million years understood why people liked gardening. I was like, "OK...so you spend all weekend hunched over on your hands and knees digging in the dirt, probably encountering things like insects, and at the end you get...something that you could probably just go pick up over at CVS? Cool, guys."

But it's so satisfying. And the results are so gorgeous. And there's something really incredible about standing back, looking at your yard which was once one thing and is now another thing entirely, and thinking I did that.