Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahchooo!

Yesterday was another gorgeous sunny spring day in the Roxiticus Valley...over 80 degrees, the perfect weather for being outdoors. As Rex and I headed out to enjoy all the flowering trees en route to his orthopedic surgeon's office in Morristown, NJ, we noticed that our Jeep is just covered in pollen. Aaaaaaaaaaaaahchooo! I have been plagued by hay fever since the fourth grade, so while I love the beauty of this season in New Jersey, it may be best for well wishers to give me silk plants instead of the live, sweet-smelling sneeze-inducing kind for Mother's Day.

There's another great reason to give me silk foliage instead of the real deal...I call it Roxiticus Desperate Black Thumb, and it runs in my family, going back generation after generation. I shall hope that, thanks to Rex and his nice green thumb, I may not pass along this dread disease to my sweet gardening daughters.

Every year around the holidays, Rex and I will be out shopping for presents and we'll see a "Christmas tree" made of live rosemary and I'll decide that it would make a lovely gift for my mother. Rex takes care of it until it the big day when we bring it to Grandmom's house, so it starts out as a living rosemary tree on Christmas Day. Then, a few days later, usually before the New Year, the call comes in from my mother to "take the dead rosemary sticks back to the store where you got it. It is defective." See the picture on the left? Those beautiful rosemary trees will not fester and die in a corner of my mother's kitchen...because they are made of silk! I found these beauties online at ArtificialPlantsandTrees.com, where they offer a variety of silk plants, trees and flowers that are created using quality materials and designed to look real.

I can't wait to see how Grandmom will try to kill this one... Happy Mother's Day!