Bloom for you.

When I first moved to Guam, Brent introduced me to a plant he bought at the Micronesia Craft Fair. It was some fancy schmancy succulent garden, planted ever so systematically in the holes of a large piece of wood, then cemented into a clay pot.

Sounds ridiculous, but it really was beautiful.

He named it our Tree of Love, and it quickly became our little joke. If you didn't water the Tree of Love one day, well, you can imagine the scrutiny.

No matter how much both of us wanted to keep the little guy alive, we sort of just lost interest. It's incredibly difficult to water a piece of bark with no soil. So, needless to say, the Tree of Love soon met its demise.

Before he left for deployment, we decided to invest in another, soil friendly Tree of Love, which we aptly named No. 2.

It was a plumeria, and if you know anything about plumerias, or most any other plants, you would know they love sunlight. And water. Imagine that.

My grandmother once told me that a good Southern woman knows her flowers. And grandma was right. We do know them, but that damn sure doesn't mean we all know how to grow them - or keep them alive for that matter.

Long story short, Tree of Love No. 2 quickly became a tall green stick in a pot of soil. The leaves fell off, the beautiful white bloom disintegrated, and I just wasn't in the mood for resuscitation.

I let it go for months. Every once in awhile, I'd pour some water in the pot, but Tree of Love No. 2 just would not reason with me. He refused to grow, and for awhile, I came to the conclusion he just wanted to be left alone to die.

About a month ago, when I put up the Christmas tree, Tree of Love No. 2 became more of a nuisance than a project. He was in the way of my prime holiday decoration. And I just wasn't going to have a dead piece of wood in a red pot messing up my Christmas spirit. "Well hell," I thought. "Maybe I'll just stick him on the back porch and see what happens."

He took instantly to the rain and sun. It turns out plants like that sort of thing.

I've been keeping an eye on him all these weeks, even pulling him inside when the rain or wind got to be too much. I left him by the bedroom window though, so he wouldn't be too far from his Vitamin D.

Eventually, leaves started to sprout. And today, when I came home from work, I looked out the window and gasped. Our Tree of Love No. 2 is in bloom again. It's a tiny bloom, just one lonely little white flower, but it's definitely there.

Funny how after 6 months of Brent and I being apart, our little friend decides to show his true colors just before my baby comes home. They say everything happens for a reason, and all that jazz.

I never thought a stick in a pot would remind me of that.