My husband's green thumb

Several years ago we had to remove our wonderful, delicious, red ruby grapefruit tree to make room for our pool. In our area, the rule of thumb is if you remove a tree you must plant another tree. Tit for tat, so to speak.

We replaced the grapefruit tree with a pool a tangerine tree. Tom planted it on the side of our house in the front yard.

Within two years our tree had fruit and we enjoyed it each season. (Sometimes it also had a monkey, but that is a story I've already written about - see archives) This season right after Tom devoured all of the tangerines, the tree began to die. The cause turned out to be some sort of nasty bug that had attacked it several years ago, lay dormant in the roots, and then slowly began to kill off the tree. Eventually, we had to remove the tree.

To replace it I suggested a lemon or a lime tree. Something I could use in my liquor cooking. Tom listened, heard the ocean when I spoke, and returned with a key lime tree. I suppose he had visions of key lime pies for Sunday dinners. I sent him and the tree packing.

We went a few months trying to decide what to plant. Then one day while backing out of my driveway I saw he had come up with a solution. I saw this:

Only it didn't quite look like this at the time I spied it. What I saw were two sticks protruding out of the hole where our tangerine tree once stood. When questioned, Tom told me it was a cutting from a plumeria tree. These trees produce a fragrant flower that is used to make leis in Hawaii. A good friend of ours from Hawaii once assured us that these are the easiest trees to grow.

Her: "Just stick a cutting in the ground and watch it grow, grow, grow! Nothing to it."

Because our neighbor behind us never trims his trees and branches are constantly hovering over our fence and poking our screen, Tom is forever having to chop away so that the screen is not punctured. During one of his trimming sessions, he chopped off these two cuttings from the Bali Palace Plumeria tree. Then he did what our friend suggested and stuck them in the ground.

I didn't have much hope for these two sticks as nothing much has happened, but recently the leaves have started sprouting on the sticks. Tom has high hopes that it will produce foliage like the one in my neighbor's yard across the street.

They planted their tree several years ago and it has taken over the front yard. They are forever outside hacking away at the thing so it doesn't overtake the house.

It does produce a nice yellow and white flower and the smell is wonderful.

I've decided I shall take weekly photos of our sticks to see how long it takes to produce a flower. While this isn't what I envisioned as a replacement tree it does give me something to blog about!