We love to walk our little gated neighborhood early in the morning.  Every garden is different, some are very minimal while others are quite ornate.  We are fascinated by the varieties of orchids perched on tree trunks billowing in the wind.  I love the varieties of bromeliads, all sizes and colors.  We greet our neighbors, hoping they speak some English. The most common Puerto Rican greeting is “Buen dia” which is a shortening of “Buenos dias.”  Sometimes it is super shortened to “Bueno!”

On one of these walks, we stopped to admire the garden of neighbor.  Their dog started barking and the lady came out to see what was going on.  We complimented her on the garden.  She said it belonged to her husband.  We continued on our walk.  We were a couple of streets away, when someone motioned us from an approaching car.  It was the lady we had just met.  Her husband wanted to show us the garden!  We got in the car and went back to her house.

Luckily, he spoke more English than she did.  We toured the garden and were gifted with a dozen plants to take back home.  What a lovely couple.  A week or so later, we dropped of a box of fruit from our garden.

We made another gardening friend on the other side of the neighborhood.  I decided bromeliads were the way to go for the front yard.  They are hardy and low maintenance.  I bought some smaller ones.  The larger ones were quite expensive, so I held off.  I noticed a garden with a lot of bromeliads.  They really looked like they needed dividing. I decided to knock on the door and ask for some that were growing behind a tree.  Here again the husband was the gardener.  He was beyond generous.  See my haul in the first picture! I was overjoyed.

No one likes to ask for things.  But when you realize that there is nothing to lose, it becomes easier.  What have you asked for recently?