I don’t remember how I ended up with a patch of aloe in my front yard.  Maybe my father?  He used to enjoy planting random stuff in my Florida yard when he’d visit.  And he also enjoyed pulling up random stuff.  Like “weeds” that weren’t.

He never did come to terms with our common grass down here—St. Augustine or Floratam—which is eerily similar to the crabgrass he spent a lifetime picking out of his yards in the Midwest.

At any rate, my little patch of aloe probably began as a plant or two.  They propagated well in the otherwise unused territory under the frangipani tree in the front yard and I happily let them do so, rightly figuring that they’d come in handy every year or so when someone touched a hot pan and needed a handy, effective salve for the burn.

And once I realized they’d flower occasionally and not only look pretty but also attract hummingbirds, the patch became a welcomed, permanent fixture in the landscape, in spite of the difficulty of weeding a patch of plants with long, stiff leaves armed with sharp needles.

My plants are the widely know species of the genus Aloe called Aloe Vera, originally from the Arabian Pennisula.  You’ll see the name, of course, on a variety of pharmaceutical products.