PHOTOGRAPHY

The Thrill Blooms

A Yellow Widow’s Thrill blooming in my mom’s house

Next month will be my mom’s 90th birthday.

She lived in the same little farming village, in the middle of South Western Ontario, for 80 years, from birth until she and my father decided to move into a nearby town with more amenities.

They bought a one-story freehold townhouse with a semi-finished basement on a small street where many of their friends and former co-workers had moved.

My dad passed away suddenly from a heart attack seven years ago, and mom has lived there alone with her dog ever since.

For some random occasion, I bought her a plant arrangement to brighten up her living room. The flower arrangement was a decorative teacup with several small plants in it. Some were flowers, while others were green and leafy.

It was a pretty arrangement. Of course, almost all of the plants eventually died, except one. We didn’t know what kind of plant it was. It just looked like a small shrub of some sort. No flowers, only leaves.

It survived, so we just kept it watered and let it grow. The plant kept living and thriving, becoming much larger — it started as about 3 inches high and is now almost two feet tall. We had to re-pot the plant during this time and decided to move it outside during the summer. We may be utterly ignorant about plants, but we knew this one wouldn’t survive a Canadian winter.

The plant is now threatening to outgrow its pot, but something remarkable has happened — amazing since neither mom nor I have green thumbs — the plant has started to flower. Deciding that I wanted to know what the plant was, I downloaded a couple of plant-identifying apps on my iPhone. After some research, which consisted of taking a couple of snapshots and letting the apps do their magic, we discovered it to be a kalanchoe, also known as the widow’s-thrill.

So I’ve now read up on how to look after the plant — it is a testament to the plant’s ability to survive that we didn’t kill it, and we’re ready for it to keep blooming. All we need to do is get it some more light, so it’ll bush out instead of being as tall and spindly as it is. As well, we need to keep the plant indoors, at least when it’s cold out.

Fingers crossed.

Paul Mansfield is a writer, a photographer, a guitar player, a philosopher — some he does well, some not so well, but he still tries them all.

You can follow him on Twitter @pmansfield.

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