On another quick topic, I simply had to make a mention about my plant. You see, I’ve had a certain plant which I’ve kept for 10+ years now. It’s been with me through my moves and was always partially growing, essentially a stick of a plant, yet I kept it.

Back in my East Texas town, there was a small nursery where I previously shopped. I saw a beautiful unusual blooming plant off to the side and when I asked the attendant what it was, he said he wasn’t sure yet. He’d found it in a patch of woods growing wild and hadn’t investigated it yet. It was unique with large flowers that bloomed in a hanging position resembling a bell. Even though he wasn’t sure of the details, I asked if I could take one of the small off shoots he had begun growing. He obliged and I took it home…where it sat and lived, sort of.

For days it barely seemed to be hanging on, but it definitely was. Granted it resembled more of a stick than the beauty I’d seen at the nursery but with my job and other duties at the time, this was low priority. So I simply kept watering it and knew I would figure out what it needed at some point; was it different soil type? a different climate (I was in NE TX)? Some while after that, while driving around in town, I saw this exact plant in someone’s front yard and thriving! I knew after that it could make it in our zone but I apparently wasn’t doing something right. Again, I was busy but at least I knew it could survive our climate but I’d have to give it attention later.

Some years later, I moved to CA. By that time, the plant was looking more like a stick than anything. Barely any leaves but it kept forking and making new little sticks. It was the oddest/ugliest little thing at the time but I KNEW what it would become if I could figure it out. On the day of the move everyone helping me (and literally everyone) at some point, picked up the potted stick plant and began taking it to the dumpster. I had to stop each one and say no, please it COMES with me. I promise, I’ll get it to grow some day. They looked at me strangely but I knew what it could be (hmm…is that a pattern I’m seeing here…flowers, houses…? nah!)

In CA there was one winter season it finally thrived. It bloomed with 7 or 8 beautiful blooms that hung down and were so brilliant. I noted that the reason it did, I had left the plant outside and it rained for weeks that year. The pot was full of standing water and I had to pour it off most days. The soil was saturated. Was that the key?

After that one rainy season, the plant once again became the stick. I tried to “over water” it, when I thought about it, lol…but with my job, my commute (1 to 1.5 hours ea way every day), traffic for anything I did on Saturday…this also became a low priority. Then I moved to West Virginia and once again, several people suggested I let the stick “go” (as though I would be doing it a favor, ha) but I insisted…nope! It comes with me. So in the truck and across the country it came, riding along side the dressers and chairs, to the big house where we moved. I put it outside and it became an after thought and I began to work on the house.

One day, while going through all those old photos I had found upstairs in the bin (do you remember that post?), I came across an entire album of someone’s trip to Panama and the amazon. And there, buried in the dusty pages of small black and white photos were two pictures of a plant they had found interesting.

There it was!! That was the plant, my plant! And it was growing wild in the amazon! That was the key; not only over watering, but warm weather and shade! Before I had kept it in the sun and in cooler temps. With the warm rainy season in WV coming, I knew the plant had a real chance now! Moving it to the shade daily as the sun moved across the sky, making sure I drug it out into the rain on rainy days, I watched it…and slowly, but surely (and finally) it took off! The leaves grew wide and wider, splitting off, making more leaves and reaching ever so far. The general name for this plant is “Angel Trumpet” (Brugmansia).

Here are a few photos of the plant that hung in there with me, and finally, after all these years and the nay-sayers, it bloomed!!

Just as we know the house will, too one day 🙂