My Mom’s friend Diane grew African violets. She had a shelf of them in the small kitchen of her Guilderland apartment. I was only there once, but the colorful violets left an impression that has remained for forty years. Diane was also the person who taught me how to force paper white narcissus bulbs – a lesson I pestered her to repeat at least three times on a trip we took to Cape Cod. She passed away many years ago, but her stories of flowers have stayed in my memory bank, and I’m passing them on here because I was recently struck by the beauty of these African violet blooms.
For all their occasionally-reputed ease of indoor cultivation, and willingness to bloom on a regular basis, I’ve never grown them, but Faddegon’s just got a new shipment of them and they may be too pretty to resist. Like certain other passions, the obsession for certain plants and flowers is a cyclical thing, ebbing and flowing as the universe designs. Finding my way back to the African violet may be one of the things that gets me through this winter – like nail polish or chess.
