My mother had a lot of indoor plants, but none that she loved more than her collection of African violets. I don’t suppose I spent any amount of time admiring them or appreciating her ability to make them flourish when I was growing up. They were just there, like furniture.
One year we visited my parents when our twin boys were about three or four years old. We should have been keeping a better eye on them. My mom uttered a cry of dismay when she discovered that the twins had gotten ahold of some pepper and sprinkled it liberally on every one of her African violets. Oh dear! Mom did her best to do damage control, but as I recall, they were never the same after that. She probably had to start a new batch.
When Mom died a few years ago, one of my sisters had the idea of setting out some small African violets at the memorial service for people to take in her memory. Naturally I took one. How hard could it be to keep one going? My mother did it effortlessly. In a year’s time, the poor thing was barely clinging to life. Only one leaf remained and the stalk to that leaf was looking to be on the verge of bad health.
I asked my two sisters, my brother and my nephew, how theirs were doing. One sister said hers had already died. The other sister, to my surprise, hadn’t even taken one, feeling certain that it would not have a good life with her. My brother, who inherited Mom’s green thumb, sent a photo of his, green, blooming, and happy. My nephew, similarly, had managed to keep his alive.
I had been toying with the idea of feeling sentimental about my African violet as a memory of my mother. When the plant died, it turned out I wasn’t as attached to it as I thought. No tears were shed. I got another African violet about a year later, figuring any African violet could serve the same purpose. It seems to be chugging along all right, but just in case, I decided to make a lasting memory of it by painting it. In retrospect, I ought to have painted it when it was blooming. If it lives long enough to bloom again, I might just do that.
If I put too much pepper on this post, do you think it will die, or will I still have to delete it in the morning?
The painting has good depth!
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Thank you!
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