we both learned

This is my aloe. Aloe is funny; it will spend years quietly outgrowing all of its pots and sprouting up new little plants and then one day you come home from a vacation to find that during your absence it had thrown itself off the table in a shower of dirt.

Plant suicide isn't really something to joke about. The mess was unbelievable - dirt on the table, dirt on the floor, dirt stuck in the crack between the baseboard and the wall. Dirt under the radiator. Some of the arms had broken and were turning black. I decided that rather than trying to stake it, I would just remove the buds and toss the parent.

At one point I think I had six separate tiny aloe plants. I gave most of them away as gifts. This one is still waiting to be adopted.