As the hostas get ragged and the tomatoes look wan, there are a few things I really cannot leave to the cold.
The amaryllis have to be hustled inside from their spot on the chilly deck, and the goldfish must be rescued from a too-shallow pond that will freeze solid this winter. A new and bigger aquarium might be in the offing — it looks like the fish had babies this summer.

My real challenge — the plant I really cannot let freeze — is the bird of paradise. Each spring I heave the plant and its pot up the basement stairs one at a time out into the back yard, where it spends the summer safely against a protective wall. In the fall the process is reversed, and I drag and bump the pot and the sprawling plant down the stairs as its leaves scratch against the stairwell and slap me in the face.
I started the bird of paradise from seeds my parents bought in Hawaii when I was 16. Each glossy brown seed had an amazing little beard of fluorescent orange, like something from another planet. Somehow I got one of them to sprout in a pot in my bedroom window.
I carried that little plant to college and crammed an increasingly large plant into cars when I moved to southern Minnesota, North Dakota, Connecticut and back to Minneapolis. After almost 40 years and several divisions that required use of an ax, the plant is five feet high and nearly that wide. It seems to get heavier each year. But it won't bloom if it doesn't get its season in the sun.
This spring I roped the leaves together and tied the pot to a dolly to drag it up the basement stairs. Now I have to tie the leaves together again and bump the pot down the stairs. The plant spends the winter next to the goldfish under a shop light, where it usually throws up its amazing blooms in January or February.
Most weeks, I only see the flowers when I go to the basement to do laundry. Still I cannot let the plant go. That bird of paradise is an old friend, and I will drag it in and out of the basement as long as I can.
Do you have a plant you refuse to give up to the cold?