In May of 2007, I won a basket stuffed with an assortment of houseplants in a raffle at a garden club event. Sometimes, I think I remember my plants’ milestones almost as well as I do those of my children!
One of those plants is a wax plant, or porcelainflower (hoya carnosa). Over the years, I have repotted it into larger and larger pots. I am fond of this plant because its leaves have a touch of pink. I love pink!
The wax plant would really like to fill a hanging planter, but…my house, my rules. Whenever it would grow beyond the generous space it has, I would clip off the wandering tip and root it in a clear glass container. About a year ago, I was getting tutorial on watering houseplants from a garden club friend who has way more houseplants than me.
When we got to the wax plant, I was excited to say, “I have one of those!” because I had yet to see a familiar plant.
Then she asked, “Has yours ever bloomed?” So now, imagine my surprise when I went into Matt’s long-abandoned bedroom (He’s married and father of two little boys) and there in the south-facing window was the wax plant with a stem of leaves that had continued to grow – but with two feet of stem with no leaves – and at the end was a waxy, PINK! flower about three inches wide!
The mother plant had been sending out several long, leafless, meandering shoots for months and I became worried that they would strangle me as I lounged on the couch watching one of my guilty pleasure reality shows. (Where are their parents?) I cut them off and put them in a glass jar to see what might happen – just before discovering the flower upstairs. I am hoping that my wax plant will respond like most do when they are cut back and that it will try even harder to produce flowers, but we’ll see.
The whole point of my gushing on and on about how this houseplant has managed to amaze and delight me during these difficult times is that there probably is something in your home or garden that is amazing, too. Look around and I bet you’ll find something amazing.
