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Why I love my aloe vera plant

I know Joy's not crazy about my aloe vera plant, but she humors me and lets me keep it. There are a lot of things about this plant that I love.

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For one thing, it's the only plant I've ever had for any length of time that not only didn't I kill it, but it's flourished. It was a housewarming gift when I got my first real apartment. It was a tiny little pup taken from a huge aloe vera that was probably 20 years old at the time. I've had it for about 10 years now, and it's the biggest one I've ever seen. I've probably given away 20 pups from it over the years to people that wanted one, and I have a round flowerbed in my yard that is full of nothing but its offspring.

It's unique in another way too though. It's the only aloe vera plant I've ever seen or heard of that blooms. No one I've talked to has ever heard of them doing it either. Check out the picture below.

Have any of you ever seen anything like that? It blooms every year, and it's getting ready to do it again. Every time it does it, I get excited and I can't help but point it out to Joy. She always says "yeah that's great", in a sort of fake enthusiastic way. I know she doesn't think it's pretty, but she says it is because she knows I do. It's just a cactus. On top of that, it's the biggest one of those not-pretty cacti anyone's ever seen.

The reason she lets me keep it, and she even pretends to like it, is because she knows the main reason that I love it. It is beautiful and it is unique, but the real reason I love it is that my Granny gave it to me. She took it from her favorite aloe vera and she told me that it would live. I told her I was terrible with plants, and she just smiled at me. She always smiled at me. "Don't water it too much, and let it get sun, Robert. It will live forever. You can't kill it. They're tough, Robert, and I know you can make it grow."

So there it sits, so damn big you can't walk by it on my walkway without scratching your legs. There it sits with its blooms that don't grow on aloe vera plants. It's huge and it's unique and it's mine. My Granny told me it would flourish, just like she told me I would. Granny was almost always right.

I love the thought there are God knows how many offspring from that plant growing all over the place. Anyone that want's a pup from it gets one. I just pull them up as the sprout out under it. I always tell them the same thing--"Don't water it too much and make sure it gets lots of sun, and it will live forever."

I like to think of all of those little pups all over blooming like this one--children from my Granny's aloe vera. Hers never bloomed. In the last few years of her life, she saw mine and she said it was beautiful. She'd never seen anything like it. She got to see an aloe vera bloom once, and the only reason was that she believed I could grow one. She told me I could keep that plant alive, and now it's huge, and its offspring are spread out all over the place.