Parrot lilies, Frida Kahlo, plastic bags

It pays to have an alstroemeria plant in your garden — or do you say parrot lily? — when you’re invited to a Frida Kahlo birthday party for a very young 66-year old-who loves her Frida.

The flowers can make a splashy decoration in your hair when you’re tired of the unibrow, the twisted braid or the Mexican wrap. The word plant, however, may be putting too fine a point on a species that can never be spoken of in the singular. Do I hear an amen? You will never see just one alstroemeria.

Those underground white tubers that hold it all together have a way of jumping ship without asking permission. I have a couple that are shooting straight through the tightly wound azalea, a family group very picky about who they allow in their territory.

Speaking of persistence: the other day I saw a mini peach, all fuzzy and compact about the size of a nickel on a peach tree I stuck in the ground about eight years ago. A neighbor who couldn’t fit it in her moving van passed it along — a tree that’s never been watered, pruned or noticed. Since I’ve never seen a peach tree grow in this, the Peach State, or arrive at our biannual plant swap, I’m skeptical about its success in the 912. Yet, there it was, the beginning of a peach on the most neglected of trees. I guess it’s a keeper.

Hey, if NPR’s “Morning Edition” can change its theme song after 40 years maybe I can grow a peach, too. Not enough to boil, dunk in ice water, peel and freeze, but still a peach.

People interested in order, uniformity, control and the complete eradication of the ubiquitous and cheery spiderwort may be appalled at the wild nature of the independent and non-complaining parrot lily. A wonderful cut flower, by the way. I find it exciting; just another reminder that given a chance nature abides by her own rules. She surprises. She makes us pay attention. She challenges.

But we have to do our part, too. Can we talk plastic bags? By now we know they are the enemy. They build up in our utility drawers. They take 1,000 years to disintegrate in landfills. They show up in the bellies of sharks. They linger in the limbs of trees, get caught by chain link fences. They do not decompose. They do not recycle. Nature does not like polyethylene. Nature does not like plastic.

But here’s the deal: nature does not like paper bags, either. The last I checked 14 million trees were cut down to produce 10 billion grocery bags. People may not want to hear this. They just got hit over the head about the evils of using plastic, for goodness sake. But it takes four times as much energy to produce a paper bag than it does to manufacture a plastic one. Unless the manufacturing is done in Canada where plastic bags are made from ethane, which is often burned off in the natural gas refining process. Oh, Canada! Once again your quiet, non-boastful ways reside.

In the end, what is so hard about bringing your own bag to the grocery store? Every nonprofit you’ve ever heard of, every company, every newlywed, every suburban household, every new product has a fiber-woven bag brandishing its name.

They fill your drawers. Use them. Fill them up. Save the trees.

We got dragged kicking and screaming into the age of safety to use our seat belts — raise your hand if you ever expected that to become the norm. Mine is up — and we survived.

Take a cloth bag into the grocery store. Plant some parrot lilies.

Contact Jane Fishman at gofish5@earthlink.net or call 912-484-3045.