This is my Goodbye Ann, Hello Annie blog

In the south it is bad manners to thank someone for the gift of a plant.  I have asked why but it was never explained by anything more than "I don't know...bad luck maybe?"

Anyway, last week one of my favorite customers who I have known and enjoyed for all the years I have been working at the nursery was getting ready to move to Kansas to be with her daughter.

All the years I have known her and saw her almost always a couple of times a week, I did not know her name.  But I knew her voice without even having to see her.  Her voice is deep and gravely, much like Marlena Dietrich with that same kind of accent and I loved to listen to her talk. When she came to the greenhouse she would always seek me out and we would chatter about this and that.  She is a gardener, a collector of lost dogs, a ragamuffin slob with a ruggedly beautiful face and she has a heart of gold.  

She called last week at the nursery announcing her name as Ann and asking for me and I recognized her voice immediately though she did not mine.  She said she was finally packing up and getting ready to go and she had something for me.  Later in the day she came to the nursery with a lovely little plum tree that I am told will bear small, luscious fruit.  Being a very sensible person she was very careful about volunteers coming up in her yard.  This was a seedling from her own large plum tree and she must have been growing it in a pot for a year.

I will miss her very much and am sorry I did not think of getting a picture of her before she left that day though she did give me a hug.  I could not help myself.  I thanked her profusely for the plum.  It was something I was dreaming of for a little while now.

Here she is in all her glory.  Isn't she pretty.  Her name is Annie.

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