Our Violet

Our African violet is far from its ancestral home.  Regardless, it is blessed with living conditions in our house that are the antithesis of the weather outside during the cold winter months of our northern climate.

It ignores the snow blowing by its window as well as the frost on the glass. However, it’s well aware of the sun—its colour and angle above the horizon.  Around April every year, the Spring sun signals the violet’s leaves to not only imagine, but sense that in its ancestral home it would be time to wake and start its yearly cycle of life.

This year’s awakening is showing itself in our kitchen bay window.  As usual, it starts with one bud creeping out into the light between a layer of its soft, plump leaves.  Then, as though that first bud was sent out to test the conditions, a whole family of buds appear from another part of the plant.  I think it’s a treasure, this little bit of life.

All this isn’t as exciting as the bursting out of fruit tree blossoms on the west coast at this time of year, but here, in our corner of the world, I appreciate our little gem in the window.

Next, I’ll be watching for the first brave crocuses to poke their buds into the air.  I hope they don’t have to work their way through a thin layer of snow.  As Canada is their ancestral home, the crocus can handle a surprise Spring snow storm.  It fact, the crocus will thrive on the moisture from the melting snow around it.

Clearly, Spring is on its way!