Green with Envy

... or is that English ivy?
Simmy sat down to think about expectations. Youthful seemed to be feeling the crush of expectations. Jane, too, was struggling through large issues of expectation. And, in this economy, there were probably a lot of people who were struggling to decide where their money should go.
People were all having to make really tough decisions these days. Do I spend a little on this or that?
It seems that we may be in a either or time. Hopefully we are not moving to a neither nor time.
Youthful had broached an interesting topic... if you could have whatever you wanted for Christmas... what would it be?
Now, this exercise was likely just meant to be a freedom from restrictions exercise...   -cise from the Latin meaning 'to cut,'... meant to dream a little about life without cutbacks.      
So, Simmy had decided to play the game as well. What or whom or what combination of the two did she envy?
Well, that was an easy one... Simmy was green with envy when she thought about Elton Johns' yearly flower budget... yep!... green with envy when she thought about a 290,000 pound budget for fresh flowers.
There is something so beautiful about real flowers... at least, Simmy and Elton John apparently think so.
But, it would be very foolish, indeed, for Simmy to actually spend that... seeing as her wages could not cover such a cost.
So, as Simmy broached this subject... Broaching was originally developed for machining internal keyways using a toothed tool, called a broach, to remove material.
... she thought it might be a good idea to remove the material of envy and try to find an agreeable substitute for her personal love of fresh flowers this Christmas season.
She had found it, of all places, at the Dutch Dime Store.
Someone had taken a Sudlow's Burslem teapot and planted a real English ivy in it.
Sudlow and Burslem are names in genealogy that are just names and don't have a meaning. Sudlow is said to be a habitational name from an unidentified place, in English (Shropshire).
The price tag, on the teapot with an ivy growing in it, was $1.00... and Simmy thought that was a great way to turn green with envy  into green with ivy... and that made Simmy feel like she was, indeed, in the ivy league.