Its 1996 and I am working in a little hole in the wall nursery in San Francisco. One day this really beautiful gardener - a 5 foot tall blonde Irish American girl with a beret and army cammo pants who runs a business called (appropriately) Hummingbird Gardens - pulls up in front of our front gate in a little Toyota pickup truck, the back end of which is loaded with ginger plants that she’s ripped out of someone’s back yard. I am totally intrigued by the plant (and the girl) so I ask her if I can have one. Of course she says, she’s just going to go pitch them at the dump. She drives away and I never see her again, but as for the ginger…

I pot the stalk up in a pot at work and take it home. The plant takes root but doesn’t really do much the first year. In 1997 the ginger moves to Michigan, riding in the back of a little yellow moving truck. The move takes place in August, lasts 6-7days so the poor plant gets pretty baked. I cut it back to the ground and it survives- promptly sending up a new stalk.

The plant lives in Ann Arbor Michigan for four years and doesn’t do much more than send up one new stalk each year (provided I cut back last years shabby stalk). I am okay with this because I am fond of it and have faith that something cool will eventually happen (it’s a challenge - see).

Finally in 2002, with the ginger basking in the sun of my condo’s back patio, something cool finally happens. At the end of the newest stalk is thick little spike protruding out from inside the last leaf: it’s a flower bud- the sucker finally flowers! It was pretty amazing after 6 years that it finally did it. And it has flowered every year since.

Now its 2007 and the ginger finds itself in Madison, Wisconsin. This is the year that it sends up two stalks both with massive flower heads. I moved it into my apartment from outside two weeks ago and the place now smells like a perfume factory. Pretty cool stuff.

The moral of the story is (besides that I’m interested in some pretty boring stuff) some projects take a long time to come to fruition. Things in life don’t always happen right away, but you gotta keep at it, keep the faith, and maybe you will get that sucker to flower.

Steve is a Portland, Oregan-based artist and farmer. A Zen master of all things green and organic. From composting to organic farming to coaxing plants back to life - having a Green Thumb would be considered an understatement.
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