Hemingway and Steinbeck Plants

This week has been full of unexpected surprises! My cousin David headed down to Key West, Florida, on vacation, so I asked him to do me a favor: would he go to The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West and ask for a plant donation?

David, you have a mission!

David and the master gardener, Dustin, picked several specimens from the Hemingway garden.

They include saplings of mahogany and tamarind trees:

Dustin also sent back royal poinciana seeds.

Royal Poinciana Seeds

As these are tropical plants, we may have to care for them indoors, but this will just allow the literary garden to expand beyond the parameters of the courtyard!

It's also exciting to have Hemingway plants from two very different locations: Michigan and Florida. This will allow me to pull writing from those different periods in Hemingway's life and ask the students to consider how his landscape affected his subject matter. I'm so grateful to Chris Struble of The Michigan Hemingway Society and to The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum for their support of the West Bloomfield High School Literary Garden. Thanks, too, to David for all of his help!

In addition, the Director of the National Steinbeck Center, Susan Shillinglaw, sent along the John Steinbeck plants I talked about in last week's post. They arrived today!

They may look a little rough, but if YOU tried traveling in a box from Salinas, California, to Michigan in mid-February, you might be huddled and frozen, too! Here we have an "indestructible" calla lily, a naked lady, and a succulent plant. Our intrepid master gardener, DaniAnn, will take charge of all of our new arrivals tomorrow. Many thanks to Susan and the National Steinbeck Center for their support of the Literary Garden!

I have some exciting news on the horizon regarding Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker...so stay tuned!