My barista and dancer will always be a child in my heart although we are trying to move away from that…I will always be her mother, she my lovely daughter.
A few months ago, on one of her visits home, perhaps it was round about Easter, she bought with her a packet of seeds in a small container that looked like one of the coffee shop’s juice packs for children.
“Look what I have, seeds to grow into violets, let’s plant them!”
So we filled the little plastic box with warm, odiferous soil from the compost heap and opened the seed packet. She poured them onto her hand expecting two or three.
There were at least 60 or 70, if not more, a little pile of dust in the middle of her palm.
“Wow! Will these really grow?” she asked, eyeing the mound of minuscule seeds with suspicion.
“Let’s see,” I said.
She sprinkled the violets onto the soil, covered them and added water. There they sat on my living room window sill for weeks.
I have an African violet on my coffee table, a large, healthy plant that produces flowers twice a year and whose leaves have a definite oval shape, a distinctive dark green colour and a furry texture.
These are the attributes I was looking for in the seed pot. I got everything but…
Perhaps the green shoots weren’t from the seeds she’d planted at all but weeds growing naturally from the compost soil?
Hubs decided the time had come to thin the tangled green-ness. How would he know what to thin, they all looked different to me and which one was the violet?
He thinned arbitrarily anyway, the pot was expanding and threatening to overtake the corner of the window sill with its fragile foliage.
Then, two weeks ago, the promise of a flower appeared. Still tightly closed it hung its head upon its stalk and made the stem list ever so slightly towards the sunny window.
When it opened she was perfect and I sent a photo to my daughter, but justice really wasn’t done!
She bore a canny resemblance to the miniature pansies I had rescued off the compost heap in February. Despite her doubtful lineage I named her,
“Violet.”
While on a walk I noticed more of her kind growing between the cracks in the pavement and had to commit them to digital eternity with my iPod. I sent them to her with the legend,
“Violet has cousins!”
A week later another bud appeared, head bent and heavy, causing the stem to lean ever more precariously towards the warm, double glazed glass. One morning it too was open and resplendent with yellow and purple marking.
Picture number three was sent to Leigh with the caption,
“Violet has a brother! Violen!”
“Yay!!” came the reply.
Barista visited this weekend and witnessed a third bud almost causing the collapse of the stalwart and brave stalk. We topped the pot up with soil and it is looking much stronger.
“Funny how such a tiny flower could threaten the well being of its parent stalk,” I mused. I wouldn’t even be able to feel its weight were it resting in my hand.
“It’s much smaller than it looked in the photos,” said my dancer daughter peering in awe at its exquisite markings, “and it looks much more like a pansy than a violet…” she agreed.
“They’re so cute,” remember she’s sooo American still! “Can I take them home?”
I’ll post a picture of “Pansie” when she emerges, all three of them sitting with their faces eagerly turned towards the sun.
Hopefully they’ll be ready for the compost heap by the time we leave.
Well hello there! My name is Vivienne McNeny.
I am an empty nester exploring life as a Boomer…you could say I'm happily Boomering along!
As a homeschooling Mum I have finally quit the job of role model and mentor to my four children. I do what I want to do, eat when I feel like it, enjoy life with my blue eyed cowboy and clean my house once a month or so whether it needs it or not!
In true English form I write about the emergence of my true identity now that I can no longer hide behind my children as their Mum.
No comments so far!
Leave a Comment