If I'm going to the trouble of buying a plant and bringing it home, it jolly well better live forever or at least till I'm too old to care. My early attempts at gardening were fostered in the bosom of my family. When I was about 5, some of my relatives went through a gentleman-farmer phase and moved to a walnut ranch outside Vacaville. Inevitably, they hosted a barbecue so the rest of the family could inspect their new lifestyle. It was hotter than hell, and the water was so hard you couldn't drink it, but I had never before seen green walnuts and those rows of trees fired my ambition.
Olives are good.
That way they keep each other company. I dutifully planted my olive pits in pairs, not realizing they'd long had the life processed out of them. Of course, they didn't sprout and the gigantic olive tree I had envisioned, spreading Biblically above the propane tank, was not to be. This set a pattern of lifelong gardening heartbreak. My vegetable garden last year yielded five pea pods and two raspberries.