It’s hard to believe I started in the houseplant business nearly 50 years ago.

Why did I open a plant shop? The answer is not complicated.

Faster than I could say “I quit,” my life changed from a sterile science lab to a living, breathing new world of tropical plants.

Stunned. Shattered. Paralyzed. Petrified. Thrown for a loop. Stopped in my tracks. Set on my heels. Knocked on my tail.

Though your destination is not yet clear

You can trust the promise of this opening…

RED LIGHT! Pull over. Who’s driving this machine? You’re all over the road. Don’t you have a plan or a scheme?

Salt Lake was the sister city to London and the Mayor wanted to send Queen Elizabeth ll a Saquarro. Aw, Providence.

Inertia: The tendency of a thing in motion to stay in motion.

This story is dedicated to the shipping and receiving department at Cactus & Tropicals.

By Lorraine Miller

The African violet was awarded the 2024 Houseplant of the Year by the National Garden Bureau.

Dear Kathy,

Do you remember starting work on my birthday?

I’m on the fly again but not by the seat-of-my-pants. I have a working plan, a plan which includes three big tasks…

One beautiful spring afternoon, a guy came in to the Grass Menagerie wearing a trench coat. No, he didn’t sport a glued-on mustache or dark glasses, but still…

One beautiful spring afternoon, a guy came in to the Grass Menagerie wearing a trench coat. No, he didn’t sport a glued-on mustache or dark glasses, but still…

We’d barely gotten settled in our new greenhouses when the neighbor who lived on the opposite side of the ‘little house’ from Phranques Gallery asked me to buy her house…

My memory tinkers with the past. Sometimes it speeds time up, making a crush of events, bumping one year into the next. Then, there are periods when time drags on and nothing changes…

If you were in Washington D.C. and someone asked, “Can you be at the White House tomorrow morning at 9:00? We’d like to take you to the airport in a White House Limousine,” would you answer, “oh, gees, no thanks. We’ll just take a cab?”

No sooner had the Secretary of the Treasury, Lloyd Benson said goodbye at the greenhouse door, than the owner of the gas station next to the new office, came knocking.