Second Time Around
The Potted plant that re-flowered
I love working with my garden and all my outdoors plants, but I have a love/hate relationship with indoor plants.
This is because I do not seem to be able to get the indoor ones to prosper.
How could that be? I do really well with the outdoors ones, and yet, all but the toughest indoor plants are doomed at my hands. So, I pretty much gave up on the indoor variety (other than our long suffering Snake Plant and an amazingly stubborn Spider plant.)
However, I do succumb to small pots of Spring flowering bulbs like crocus and mini daffodils, and plants like Primroses, during the dull days of winter.
We do get some inside colour for a few weeks, then I let them partially dry out and plant them outside in the spring, where they will eventually grow and bloom the following spring.
In January of 2024, I saw the pretty orange plant in the lead photo, and decided to take a gamble on it.
It is called Ornithogalam, sometimes referred to as Star of Bethlehem, and is a native of South Africa.
It flowered for several months, finally giving up in mid March. I left it in the kitchen window. The dead flowers continued to hang onto the stem and kept a lot of their colour, so I just left them. After the main stem and the leaves finally turned brown I removed them, but left the pot where it was. I had read that there was a possibility the plant might regrow. I gave it a small amount of water every couple of weeks.
November 2024 I spotted a tiny green shoot in the pot. I continued to give it a little water every two weeks. The green shoot got longer. At the end of December there was no doubt that it was an actual stem rather than just a little leaf shoot. And one could see what appeared to be buds forming.
Then on January 3, 2025, I saw what is shown in the photo below.
Now I was excited. Every day the stem got sturdier and the buds expanded more and more.
Finally, on February 3, 2025, the first two flowers began to open.
And, finally on February 6, several more flowers opened.
Since then it has continued to flower, with a few more buds showing. Not as floriferous as the first time, but a welcome sight none the less.
Perhaps there is still hope for me as an indoor plant person?🤣
