My parents have been in love with gardening for as long as I can recall. They get some sort of strange pleasure from pulling weeds, watering flowers, watching things grow. I never really got it until I got a house of my own, and now, with spring on the horizon, it's almost killing me to see which plants survived the winter. This is a particularly big deal as this was their very first winter. Last year, my yard was a box. We put in an enormous flower bed, filled it with wonderful things, planted half a zillion plants (ok, so maybe it was thirty...), and now I can hardly wait to see what comes back.

My parents are always saying, "We can plant anything you want!" Well that's great, guys, and if I had a clue what I wanted, things would be much easier. I'm very much in the learning stage of plants. Yesterday, for instance, there were some weeds in the yard. Weeds annoy me. They sprout just to piss me off, I think. Anyhow, I pulled weeds when I got home, and I enjoyed it! Why, you're wondering. Do you have any idea how much easier it is to pull those little boogers when the ground is wet? It's amazing.

I've digressed. I'm now very aware of plants. I know what they are, and I like them. I like knowing what they are, too. Downtown Fort Worth is covered in small plant boxes. They encase every tree down every street. Once or twice or sometimes three times a month, trucks of plant people roll in, dig up the dead things and plant new, happy plants.

I was walking down Houston last week when I caught whiffs of something fabulous - light and airy, fragrant but not so much that it choked you. I called Mom.

"Okay, so I was walking down Houston, and I could smell something really strong. I thought it was the perfume of the lady in front of me, but she turned the corner, and I could still smell it, so then I thought it might be the flowers even though I can't ever smell the flowers. But it totally was, Mom. So these flowers - they're like - sort of short and bushy. They're on a sort of stalkish thing and the top part - maybe the top half - is flowers, but it's a bunch of little flowers, sort of like trumpets - clusters, kind of like - what are those other ones that we planted in the backyard that were the kind you have to plant every year? They were pink, and they were ground cover and you said you'd never seen that before? Verbenia! It's sort of like that, but you know, on the stalk and stuff, but the top part is round - so the flowers are sort of like a flower hat. Any ideas?"

"Hyacinth."

"Cool, I was just, you know, curious."

Her ability to take my babbling mess of words, process it and actually give me an answer (a correct one at that) never cease to amaze me. If any of us figure out what the funny bushy flowering thing is that we planted on the corner of the house last year is called, I'll let you guys know, because it was seriously the coolest plant of all time and I'm not just saying that because it grew, despite the fact that I hardly ever watered it.

Are you guys into plants? What are some of your favorites?