Just Like My Mother

I looked around the house tonight and realized that I have my windows loaded with all the plants I can crowd in.  The hanging strawberry pots reminded me of my mother's porch.  She had an impressive amount of hooks in the ceiling and double and triple pot stacks hanging from them. She was an absolute McGyver when it came to hanging pots. She hoarded pieces of chain and S hooks in a round red and white cookie tin and would paint the chain when she had to, for aesthetic reasons. She did not do shabby chic. She would call the crackle finish "chicken house look". If something was in a set it had to stay in that set.  I, on the other hand, have a secret desire to paint the sliding door in the kitchen with crackle finish but unfortunately my husband quite unaccountably agreed with her on that point. And I consider a set a useful place to choose individual pieces from.  But I digress.
She had pots on the floor. and on the window sill And where ever she thought they might grow.  And if it was a variegated leaf she loved it even more. Over the years she tried geraniums, african violets, english ivy, bird of paradise, begonias in every shape, hibiscus, sanseveria, ferns, shamrocks green and shamrocks burgundy, and probably dozens of others.  The house was not big but she made use of every inch of space that would work.
I miss her so.