Week 50 (Dec. 10-16) Family Heirloom

Family Heirlooms come in many forms - from the more traditional jewellery and china to more unusual items.  A few years ago I posted about my experience of my sister and I cleaning out the family home after the deaths of our parents - our father in 2013 and mother in 2015 - and the importance of knowing the stories behind the many treasures tucked away in cupboards and drawers, or out in the shed.

Cleaning out the house, we came across treasures in every corner.  A hand tinted photo of my mother as a child, a box of slides and negatives from early in our parents' marriage, a small garnet brooch that belonged to my great grandmother, a bronze alligator nutcracker made by my grandfather, and so much more. 

Then there is my heirloom garden gnome.  Most heirlooms are small, portable and easy to take with you when you move.  Some, like my gnome, are not.  He is about 50 cm tall, and my family purchased two of them for my father's 50th birthday, back in January 1976.  When we sold the family home my sister and I decided we wanted to keep one gnome each.  At the time we first brought them, there was a rash of gnome-napping happening where we lived, with gnomes disappearing from gardens, never to be seen again.  So my father filled the concrete shells with more concrete, then installed them on concrete plinths about 30 cm in diameter and 10 cm thick, out in our front yard.  They weigh a ton, and needless to say, they have never been successfully 'gnome-napped'.

Then, there is the heirloom hare's foot fern.  The original hares-foot belonged to my grandmother.  Before she passed away, my mother took a cutting from her plant, brought it home and potted it.  It thrived in our greenhouse and by the time my parents passed away it had overgrown its pot and was firmly attached to the wooden shelf below.  Clearly it was not moving with me to my new home.  So much as my mother had done, I took a few cuttings, potted them and hoped for the best.

These two little cuttings have thrived.  They quickly outgrew the little pots I had started them in, and have since been transplanted to bigger pots.  They sit, one in my study and one on a stand in my dining room, and I think of my mother and grandmother whenever I see them.  I later took a new cutting from one of these plants and potted it for a friend.  And so the heirloom hares-foot fern continues the be 'handed down', hopefully for many years to come.