A Little Flora

My mother has a lipstick vine like this one that I picked out at a greenhouse over thirty years ago. I had never heard of plants living so long but apparently they do. Over the years, as I went away to college, moved to this state and that, this tropical plant has lived a contented life in central Connecticut. It’s a temperamental bloomer, they say but according to Mom, hers is a harbinger of visits from … you guessed it, me. It would be dormant for months, she’d report. No lipsticks in sight. But as it approached time for me to visit the family homestead, out would pop some lovely little lipstick flowers. The blooms on hers tend to a more eggplant purple, rather than these red ones. I just found this plant a few months ago in a nursery nearby. Over the years, I have tried to grow cuttings from Mom’s plant and others that I have bought new but I’ve never been able to keep them alive for more than a few months. Odd … or not, can’t quite figure yet. I’m still trying to ascertain the hue of my thumb, green or otherwise. The only plant we have in the house right now is the longest, leggy-est pothos (read: un-killable plant) known to man. As our house is currently child-proofed, there aren’t too many places for houseplants to live happily. The lipstick vine is living outside for the summer which it seems to like so far and I’m just hoping to find a warm, partially sunny place inside for the winter that will please its fickle temperament. Now if I only knew whose visit these blooms are predicting…